Jnternational  ZTbeoloQical  library 


EDITED   BY 

CHARLES  A.  BRIGGS,  D.D.,  D.LiTT., 

Sometime  Graduate  Professor  of  Theological  Encyclop&dia  and  Symbolics, 
Union  Theological  Seminary,  New   York ; 


STEWART  D.  F.   SALMOND,  D.D., 

Sometime  Principal,  and  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology  and  New  Testament 
Exegesis,  United  Free  Church  College,  A  berdeen. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   RELIGION 

BY  GEORGE  GALLOWAY,  D.PHIL.,  D.D. 


INTERNATIONAL  THEOLOGICAL   LIBRARY 

THE 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 


BY 

GEORGE  GALLOWAY,  D.PHIL.,  D.D. 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1914 


PREFACE. 

THE  volume  of  the  "  International  Theological  Library " 
on  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  was  originally  undertaken 
by  the  late  Professor  Flint.  Unfortunately  the  state  of 
Dr.  Flint's  health  prevented  him  from  accomplishing  any 
part  of  the  work.  At  the  request  of  the  Editor  of  the 
Library — the  late  Professor  C.  A.  Briggs,  of  New  York — 
and  the  Publishers,  the  present  writer  agreed  to  take  the 
place  of  his  respected  teacher. 

The  reader  will  find  in  the  Introduction  a  statement 
of  the  method  adopted  in  the  book,  and  the  reasons  for 
adopting  it.  Throughout  the  work  an  attempt  has  been 
made  to  keep  the  facts  and  movements  of  religious  ex- 
perience in  the  foreground,  and  to  discuss  the  problems 
of  religious  philosophy  in  the  light  of  their  historic 
development.  And  though  this  may  have  led  sometimes 
to  a  certain  amount  of  repetition,  the  course  followed  has 
the  distinct  advantage  of  bringing  the  philosophic  theory 
of  religion  into  closer  relation  with  the  life  of  the  religious 
spirit. 

In  the  matter  of  philosophical  principles  the  author 
is  in  general  sympathy  with  the  movement  called  Personal 
Idealism ;  and  he  has  learned  much  from  writers  like 
Lotze,  Professor  James  Ward,  and  Professor  Stout.  At 
the  same  time,  it  is  hard  to  resist  the  conclusion  that 
even  a  monadistic  type  of  idealism  requires  modifications, 
if  it  is  to  do  justice  to  the  realistic  implications  of  ex- 


vii 


Vlll  PREFACE 

perience.  A  speculative  theory  of  religion,  however,  must 
be  judged  mainly  by  the  fairness  with  which  it  interprets, 
and  the  adequacy  with  which  it  explains,  the  religious 
experience  as  a  whole. 

To  meet  the  wants  of  those  interested  in  the  subject 
a  Bibliography  has  been  added,  which,  it  is  hoped,  may 
prove  useful. 

For  kind  help  in  revising  some  of  the  proofs,  thanks 
are  due  to  the  Kev.  D.  Frew,  D.D.,  and  the  Kev.  W.  R 

Henderson,  B.D. 

GEORGE  GALLOWAY. 

CASTLE-DOUGLAS,  N.B., 
January  1914. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGES 

INTRODUCTION     .......  1-53 

A.  The  Growth  of  Religious  Philosophy       .            .             .  1-23 

B.  Problem  and  Method       .....  24-40 
0.  The  Philosophy  of  Religion  in  Relation  to  (1)  Philosophy, 

and  (2)  Theology 41-53 

PAKT  I. 

THE  NATURE  AND  DEVELOPMENT  OF  RELIGION  (PHENOMENOLOGICAL)  54-250 

CHAPTER  I. 

f  THE  PSYCHICAL  BASIS  OF  RELIGION     ....  54-87 

A.  The  Psychical  Nature  of  Man     ....  54-72 

B.  The  Psychical  Elements  and  the  Religious  Consciousness  72-82 
G.  The  Religious  Relation  :  Its  Subjective  and  Objective  Aspects    82-87 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  BEGINNINGS  ANU  GROWTH  OF  RELIGION  .            .           .  88-152 

A.  Tribal  Religion    ......  88-109 

(a)  Primitive  Religious  Ideas  ....  89-98 

(V)  Magic  and  Religion            .  98-103 

(c)  The  Main  Features  of  Tribal  Religion        .   '         .  103-109 

B.  National  Religion             .            .            .             .             .  109-131 

(a)  The  Transition  from  Tribal  to  National  Religion  110-115 

(b)  The  Specific  Features  of  National  Religion            .  115-124 

(c)  Sacred  Things,  Acts,  and  Persons              .            .  124-131 
0.  Universal  Religion           .....  131-152 

(a)  The  Rise  of  Universal  Religion      .             .            .  131-138 

(b)  Main  Features  of  Universal  Religion          .            .  138-147 

(c)  Phenomena  of  Survival      ....  147-152 

CHAPTER  III. 

CHARACTERISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  DEVELOPED  RELIGION    .            .  153-179 

A.  The  Spiritualisation  of  Feeling  ....  153-163 

B.  Religious  Doctrines          .....  163-168 

C.  Spiritual  Worship  and  the  Religious  Life            .             .  169-172 

D.  The  Individual  and  the  Religious  Community    .             .  173-179 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  IV. 

RELIGION  :  ITS  ESSENTIAL  NATUKE  AND  RELATIONS  . 

A.  Definition  and  Specific  Character 
-—    B.  Relations  to  Science,  Morality,  and  Art  . 

(a)  Science       ..... 

(b)  Morality    ..... 

(c)  Art  ..... 
O.  Religion  and  Culture       .... 


PAGES 

180-218 
180-187 
187-212 
189-195 
195-204 
204-212 
212-218 


CHAPTER  V. 

UKLIGIOCJS  DEVELOPMENT 

A.  The  General  Nature  of  Spiritual  Development 

B.  The  Religious  Development  of  Man 
0.  Main  Features  and  Results 


219-250 
220-228 
228-241 
241-250 


PART  II. 

RELIGIOUS  KNOWLEDGE  AND  ITS  VALIDITY  (EPISTEMOLOGICAL) 


251-370 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION  AND  THE  PKOBLEM  OF  VALIDITY      251-270 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  NATURE  OF  KNOWLEDGE    . 

A.  Theories  of  Knowledge    . 

(a)  Empirical  and  Realistic     . 

(b)  Rational  and  a  Priori 

(c)  The  Critical  Theory 

B.  The  Development  of  Knowledge  . 

C.  The  Presuppositions  of  Knowledge 

D.  The  Validity  of  Knowledge 


271-301 
273-282 
274-277 
277-280 
280-282 
282-287 
287-292 
292-301 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

RELIGIOUS  KNOWLEDGE  ......  302-333 

A.  The  Attitude  of  the  Religious  Mind  to  its  Object  .  302-307 

B.  The  Sphere  and  Character  of  Religious  Knowledge         .  307-323 

(a)  Religious  Knowledge  and  Empirical  Knowledge  .  307-314 

(6)  The  Religious  Ideal  and  Historic  Experience        .  314-317 

(c)  Authority  and  Religious  Knowledge          .  .  317-323 

C.  Special  Problems  of  Religious  Knowledge  .  .  323-333 

(a)  The  Significance  of  Religious  Doubt          .  .  324-329 

(b)  Knowledge  and  Faith        ....  329-333 


CONTENTS  XI 

CHAPTER  IX. 

PAGES 

MODES  OF  RELIGIOUS  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRUTH  334-370 

A.  The  Principle  of  Analogy  ....  334-343 

B.  Teleological  Interpretation          ....  343-353 
O.  Values  and  their  Rationality      ....  353-360 
D.  The  Idea  of  Truth  in  Religion     ....  360-370 

PART    III. 

THE  ULTIMATE  TRUTH  OF  RELIGION  (ONTOLOGIOAL)  .  .  871-590 

CHAPTER  X. 

A  SPECULATIVE  THEORY  OF  RELIGION  :  ITS  DATA  AND  AIM  371-401 

A.  The  Data  and  the  Problem  they  Raise   .  .  .  371-381 

B.  Proofs  of  the  Existence  of  God    ....  381-394 
G.  Experience  and  its  Relation  to  God        .            .            .  395-401 

CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  SPECULATIVE  CONCEPTION  OF  A  WORLD-GROUND  .  402-449 

Introductory     .......  402-403 

A.  The  Problem  of  Reality  :  Realistic  and  Idealistic  Solutions  404-418 

B.  Individuality  and  Unity  in  Experience,  and  their  Basis  418-434 
0.  Personality  and  the  Claims  of  Religious  Experience       .  435-442 
D.  Developing  Experience  and  the  World-Ground .            .  442-449 

NOTE. 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION  •  •  449-456 

CHAPTER  XII. 

GOD  :  His  RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  .  .  .  457-490 

A.  Historic  Conceptions  of  God      ....  457-468 

(a)  Deism         ......  458-460 

(6)  Pantheism 460-466 

(c)  Theism       ......  466-468 

B.  God  in  Relation  to  the  Experienced  World         .  .  468-481 

(a)  God  as  Creative 469-474 

(V)  God  as  Iminanent  and  Transcendent         .  .  474-477 

(c)  God  as  Infinite,  Eternal,  and  Absolute      .  .  477-481 

G   Metaphysical  Attributes  of  God  .  .  .  482-490 

(a)  Omnipotence          .....  483-485 

(6)  Omnipresence         .....  485-487 

(c)  Omniscience  .....  487-490 


Xll 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


GOD  AS  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL 

A.  God  as  Personal  .  . 

B.  God  as  Ethical 


PAQB8 
491-511 

492-504 
504-511 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  .... 

A.  The  Rise  of  the  Problem  . 

B.  Natural  and  Moral  Evil  . 

G.  Theism  and  the  Existence  of  Evil  . 

D.  Human  Freedom  and  Evil          . 

E.  Optimism  and  Pessimism  .  . 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  PROGRESS  AND  DESTINY  OF  MAN 

A.  The  Goal  of  Human  History        .  . 

B.  The  Idea  of  Immortality 

C.  The  Temporal  and  the  Transcendent  World 
1).  Revelation  and  Man's  Religious  Development 

Concluding  Remarks        .... 


612-549 
512-517 
517-523 
524-531 
531-543 
543-549 


550-590 
550-562 
562-574 
574-581 
581-587 
587-590 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
INDEX    , 


591-593 
695-602 


THE    PHILOSOPHY  OF 
RELIGION. 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF 
RELIGION. 

INTRODUCTION, 
A.— THE  GKOWTH  OF  KELIGIOUS  PHILOSOPHY. 

PHILOSOPHY  is  reflexion  on  experience  in  order  to  apprehend 
its  ultimate  meaning.  The  philosophic  spirit  is  relatively 
a  late  growth  in  the  process  of  human  development,  and 
man  is  religious  long  before  he  philosophises.  Plato  and 
Aristotle  have  traced  the  birth  of  philosophy  to  the  feeling 
of  wonder  which  arises  in  the  mind  of  man  as  he  con- 
templates the  moving  spectacle  of  things.  But  even 
among  primitive  men  the  phenomena  of  nature  evoked 
feelings  of  awe  and  wonder  which  stimulated  them  to 
religious  acts.  Such  wonder,  however,  did  not  provoke 
men  to  philosophise.  Only  at  a  higher  stage  of  develop- 
ment, when  man  has  won  for  himself  a  certain  indepen- 
dence and  so  enjoys  leisure  to  reflect,  does  his  wonder  assume 
that  intellectual  cast  which  issues  in  philosophy.  The 
philosopher  steps  on  the  scene  after  the  social  organisation 
has  so  perfected  the  material  basis  of  life,  that  man  is  no 
longer  daily  anxious  about  the  satisfaction  of  his  bodily 
needs,  and  so  has  time  and  opportunity  to  speculate  on 
himself  and  his  surroundings.  This  truth  Aristotle  long 
ago  fully  realised.1  A  considerable  progress  in  civilised 
life  on  the  part  of  society,  and  in  self-conscious  activity  on 
the  part  of  its  members,  are  the  conditions  which  precede 

1  Vid.  Meta.  i.  2.  p.  9826,  18. 


2  INTRODUCTION 

the  emergence  of  philosophy  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
word.  The  instinctive  way  of  explaining  things,  and  the 
naive  attitude  to  nature  and  life,  are  already  part  of  a  dis- 
tant past,  ere  man's  developed  powers  of  thinking  lay  on 
him  the  burden  of  self-conscious  reflexion  upon  the  meaning 
of  his  experience.  Philosophy  is  the  fruit  of  a  society's 
maturer  age,  not  of  its  youthful  spring-time.  Hegel  has 
expressed  this  truth  in  a  striking  fashion :  "  As  the  thought 
of  the  world,  it  makes  its  first  appearance  at  a  time  when 
the  actual  fact  has  consummated  its  process  of  formation, 
and  is  now  fully  matured.  .  .  .  The  owl  of  Minerva  does 
not  start  upon  its  flight  till  the  evening  twilight  has  begun 
to  fall." 

The  philosophic  spirit,  then,  when  it  enters  upon  its 
self-imposed  task,  finds  its  matter  to  hand.  Questions  are 
before  it  demanding  an  answer.  The  development  of 
culture  has  organised  experience  in  specific  forms — in 
politics  and  art,  in  law  and  religion,  for  example.  These 
have  come  to  present  problems  to  the  mind  which  call  for 
solution.  What  are  the  origin  and  the  end,  the  meaning 
and  the  value  of  these  characteristic  forms  of  life  ?  What 
part  do  they  severally  play  in  the  larger  drama  of  human 
experience  ?  The  case  of  religion  especially  invites  philo- 
sophic thought.  For  religion  is  one  of  the  earliest  and 
most  constant,  one  of  the  deepest  and  most  engrossing 
forms  of  human  activity,  and  in  tendency  and  outlook  it 
can  claim  a  near  kinship  with  philosophy.  In  its 
developed  forms,  religion  seeks  to  present  a  view  of  the 
world  and  life  which  satisfies  the  spiritual  and  emotional 
needs  of  man ;  hence  it  deals  with  the  same  problem  which 
exercises  the  mind  of  the  speculative  thinker.  It  does  so, 
however,  in  a  practical  and  spiritual  interest,  and  not  in  a 
way  that  fully  satisfies  the  demands  of  reflective  thought. 
But  a  developed  and  living  religion  is  sensitive  to  the 
claims  of  philosophic  thinking,  and,  under  favouring  con- 
ditions, theology  readily  assumes  a  speculative  form. 
Religious  doctrines  are  purified  and  deepened,  so  that  they 
approximate  to  philosophical  conceptions  and  convey  a 


THE   GROWTH    OF    RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY  3 

reflective  view  of  the  world  as  a  whole.  We  have,  in 
other  words,  a  reflective  movement  growing  up  within  a 
religion,  and  lifting  the  religious  consciousness  into  the 
region  of  speculative  thinking.  This  is  not  a  Philosophy 
of  Keligion  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word,  but  it  is  the 
form  in  which  religious  philosophy  first  appears  in  the 
course  of  human  history.  I  shall  illustrate  this  by 
referring  to  Brahmanism  and  then  to  Christianity. 

(1)  The  Indian  Vedas  reveal  to  us  a  stage  of  polythe- 
istic religion  where  the  forms  of  the  gods,  if  no  longer 
primitive,  still  retain  traces  of  their  original  connexion 
with  the  powers  and  forces  of  nature.  But  as  individu- 
alities these  gods  are  not  drawn  in  sharp  outlines :  they  are 
shadowy  creations,  and  one  tends  to  blend  with,  or  to  be 
absorbed  by  another  in  the  mind  of  the  worshipper.  This 
native  bent  towards  unification  was  steadily  fostered  by 
reflexion,  and  became  the  basis  on  which  philosophical 
thought  slowly  transformed  the  Vedic  theology  into  a 
speculative  system.  Brahman  and  Atman,  which  in  the  Vedas 
mean  respectively  prayer  and  vital  breath,  were  transmuted 
into  universal  cosmic  principles :  they  were  identified  in  the 
Upanishads,  and  made  the  all-embracing  principle  of  life  and 
existence.  There  is  One  being  and  no  second :  the  gods  of 
earlier  religion  gradually  dissolve  into  floating  appearances 
of  the  single  and  ever-present  soul  of  things  (Atman). 
Even  the  distinction  of  worshipper  and  worshipped,  which 
seems  so  essential  to  the  religious  attitude,  dwindles  and 
fades,  till  the  Hindu  thinker,  in  the  act  of  knowledge, 
recognised  that  he  was  one  with  the  All,  with  Brahma. 
The  very  appearance  of  difference  is  explained  away;  it 
is  the  product  of  illusion  (Maya).  The  end  of  the  Vedas, 
as  the  Vedanta  is  termed,  is  a  strict  pantheism  which  pro- 
claims the  identity  of  man  with  the  one  and  indivisible 
Being.  Here  then  is  a  conspicuous  illustration  of  a  specu- 
lative process  growing  up  within  a  historic  religion,  slowly 
transforming  its  earlier  features,  and  at  last  restating  the 
issues  in  the  form  of  a  thoroughgoing  monistic  philosophy. 
The  result  is  not  an  arbitrary  reconstruction  upon  a  new 


4  INTRODUCTION 

principle :  it  was  reached  by  the  exclusive  development  of 
certain  tendencies  which  were  present  in  the  religion  from 
the  first. 

(2)  India  supplies  us  with  the  earliest  example  of  the 
beginnings  and  growth  of  a  religious  philosophy :  a  later 
illustration  is  found  in  Christianity.  In  the  latter  case, 
however,  an  important  difference  has  to  be  noted.  The 
speculative  impulse  did  not  proceed  from  within  the 
Christian  religion  itself ;  it  was  due  to  its  contact  with  an 
independent  body  of  philosophical  conceptions.  The  great 
religious  movement  which  had  its  centre  and  origin  in 
Christ  was  an  ethical  and  spiritual  movement ;  and  the 
gospel  when  it  was  first  preached  was  a  way  of  life  and  not 
a  theology.  But  in  an  active  and  expanding  religion 
theological  statement  became  necessary,  and  when  Christi- 
anity passed  into  the  Gentile  world  it  encountered  an 
atmosphere  impregnated  with  philosophical  ideas.  To 
escape  the  influence  of  these  ideas  was  hardly  possible ; 
and  the  biblical  literature  already  shows  traces  of  their 
working,  notably  so  in  the  Johannine  Gospel.  This  com- 
merce with  philosophy,  which  at  first  seemed  a  merely 
human  wisdom  and  a  "conceit  of  knowledge"  to  be 
avoided  by  Christians,  was  hastened  by  the  rise  of  Gnosti- 
cism. The  bold  and  fantastic  constructions  by  which  the 
Gnostics  strove  to  explain  Christianity  as  the  centre  of  a 
great  world-movement  or  cosmic  process  of  redemption 
fascinated  many,  while  they  distorted  the  spirit  of  the 
gospel.  That  Gnosticism  appealed  to  a  need  was  clear 
from  the  attraction  it  exercised  :  the  question  lay  to  hand 
whether  Christian  thinkers  could  not  respond  to  that  need 
in  a  better  way.  A  statement  of  Christian  truth  in  a 
larger  perspective  was  wanted,  and  the  method,  as  it 
seemed,  was  to  oppose  to  the  false  a  true  YVOHTIS.  Already 
in  the  second  century,  Justin  Martyr  proclaimed  that 
Christianity  was  the  true  philosophy,  and  that  all  who 
lived  in  fellowship  with  the  divine  Word  were  Christians 
even  before  Christ.  The  influence  of  Platonic  and  Neo- 
Platonic  ideas  is  very  apparent  in  the  Alexandrian  Fathers. 


THE   GROWTH    OF   RELIGIOUS    PHILOSOPHY  5 

To  Clement  of  Alexandria  and  his  disciple  Origen  it  was  a 
firm  conviction,  that  the  truths  which  were  the  object  of 
faith  (TTIVTIS)  could  be  made  the  object  of  philosophic  know- 
ledge (ryvwa-w).  In  Origen  especially  we  see  Platonic  and 
Neo-Platonic  elements  conspiring  to  elevate  the  doctrines 
of  the  Church  into  the  form  of  a  speculative  theology. 
Through  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos,  Origen  construes  the 
Incarnation  and  explains  revelation.  With  the  Neo- 
Platonists  he  holds  the  nature  of  God  to  be  incognisable  in 
itself,  and  to  be  the  subject  of  negative  predicates  only. 
God  belongs  to  the  region  of  eternal  and  immutable  Being, 
and  this  region,  after  Plato,  is  contrasted  sharply  with  the 
lower  world  of  becoming  and  decay.  So  the  creation  of 
the  world  and  the  generation  of  the  Son,  Origen  thinks, 
must  be  conceived  as  eternal  processes,  if  we  are  not  to 
draw  down  into  this  temporal  and  mutable  world  the 
changeless  and  transcendent  Deity.  A  fusion  of  Neo- 
Platonic  and  Christian  influences  also  meets  us  at  a  later 
date  in  Augustine.  If  we  generalise  the  impressions 
derived  from  a  study  of  this  movement  in  the  Church  of 
the  first  three  centuries,  we  may  describe  it  as  an  endeavour 
to  prove  that  the  content  of  Christian  faith  can  be  made 
the  object  of  knowledge.  Under  the  shaping  influence  of 
Greek  thought  the  philosophical  theologians  of  the  Church 
tried  to  reach  a  deeper  ground  for  religious  doctrines  than 
authority  pure  and  simple.  They  attempted  to  show  that 
Christian  doctrines  are  the  expression  of  a  rational  and 
comprehensive  order  which  thought  is  able  to  apprehend. 
Whatever  value  we  may  put  on  the  work  of  the  Hellenistic 
Fathers,  we  must  at  least  recognise  that,  in  the  place  and 
function  they  assigned  to  speculative  insight,  they  were  the 
pioneers  of  religious  philosophy  in  the  West. 

Over  the  history  of  religious  philosophy  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  in  modern  times  up  to  and  including  the  work 
of  Kant,  I  must  pass  rapidly.  When  we  reach  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  subject  calls  for  fuller  treatment. 

The  Middle  Ages  exhibit  a  remarkable  development 
of  reason  on  its  purely  formal  side  and  a  great  dialectical 


6  INTRODUCTION 

acuteness.  But  the  old  freedom  of  thinking  has  vanished, 
and  philosophy,  once  the  mistress  of  the  mansion,  has 
become  the  handmaid  of  theology  which  rules  in  her 
place.  The  inviolable  truth  of  the  dogmas  of  the  Church 
is  presupposed,  and,  while  the  thinker  may  explicate  and 
justify  them,  he  is  not  free  to  alter  or  discard  them.  That 
it  was  possible  to  attain  a  rational  knowledge  of  the  truth 
of  the  Dogma  was  at  first  generally  assumed  by  the 
Scholastics,  and  under  Aristotelian  and  Neo-Platonic  in- 
spiration they  developed  a  speculative  theology  which  was 
meant  to  elucidate  the  truth  of  the  Church's  dogmatic 
system.  Yet,  notwithstanding  its  dialectical  subtlety, 
mediaeval  philosophy  suffered  from  an  incurable  defect. 
It  rested  on  a  dualism  which  excluded  fruitful  interaction 
between  the  form  and  matter  of  thought,  and  it  was 
therefore  incapable  of  a  real  progress.  A  mobile  form 
was  confronted  with  an  intractable  matter.  Whenever 
the  truth  of  the  Dogma  was  called  in  question,  the 
elaborate  constructions  of  the  Schoolmen,  like  a  building 
whose  foundations  have  been  undermined,  gradually 
collapsed.  This  result  was  visibly  foreshadowed  in  the  T 
last  phase  of  Scholasticism :  theologians  had  lost  faith  in  1 
the  possibility  of  rationalising  the  Dogma,  and  now  based  ' 
its  truth  on  authoritative  revelation.  Meanwhile,  the 
difficulty  of  reconciling  ecclesiastical  doctrines  and  philo- 
sophical thought  led  to  the  theory  of  the  "  double  truth." 
It  was  urged,  with  covert  irony  no  doubt,  that  what  was 
true  in  theology  might  be  false  in  philosophy,  and  what 
was  true  in  philosophy  might  be  false  in  theology. 
Thought  had  now  come  to  an  impasse,  and  religious 
philosophy  had  ceased  to  be  possible.  Progress  could  only 
ensue  when  philosophy  returned  on  its  steps,  revised  the 
assumptions  on  which  it  had  proceeded,  and  resumed  its 
journey  under  fresh  auspices.  The  reformation  signalised 
the  beginning  of  this  new  movement  which  has  given  birth 
to  Modern  Philosophy. 

Not  immediately,    however,  nor  even  very  soon,  did 
the  modern  mind  apply  itself  to  work  out  a  philosophy  of 


THE   GROWTH    OF   RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY  7 

religion.  Only  the  one  religion  was  really  before  men's 
minds ;  and  philosophy,  delivered  after  a  severe  struggle 
from  the  tyranny  of  an  imperious  master,  naturally  turned 
first  to  other  fields  which  had  long  been  waiting  to  be 
cultivated.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  with  Leibniz,  we 
have  a  really  important  attempt  to  bring  philosophical 
principles  to  the  solution  of  religious  problems.  In  his 
Theodicfa,  Leibniz  sets  out  from  the  theistic  standpoint 
and  tries  to  prove  it  is  compatible  with  the  present  order 
of  the  world,  an  order  which  contains  within  it  both 
natural  and  moral  evil.  The  aim  of  the  work,  however, 
is  not  so  much  to  unfold  a  philosophy  of  religion  as  to 
show  that  religious  and  philosophical  conceptions  harmon- 
ise, and  that  specific  Christian  doctrines  can  be  philosophi- 
cally justified.  It  is  objected,  for  instance,  that  the 
goodness  of  God  is  inconsistent  with  the  evil  in  the  world. 
Here  Leibniz  reminds  us  we  have  not  merely  to  consider 
what  is  possible,  but  what  is  "  compossible."  In  other 
words,  when  we  regard  the  limitations  which  elements 
within  a  whole  impose  on  each  other,  he  thinks  he  can 
show  this  is  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds,  and  that  the 
evil  in  it  is  not  inconsistent  with  its  government  by  an 
all  wise  and  righteous  God.  The  arguments  of  the 
Theodicfo  are  not  always  convincing,  and  in  general 
Leibniz  was  over  sanguine  about  the  prospects  of  reconcil- 
ing opposing  principles  and  movements.  At  the  same 
time  his  philosophical  work  is  of  outstanding  interest  and 
importance  in  its  bearing  on  religion ;  for  he  insists 
throughout  on  the  teleological  character  of  experience,  and 
on  the  reference  of  all  monads  to  God,  the  Supreme 
Monad,  who  is  the  ground  of  the  system  of  existences. 
The  speculative  theology  of  recent  times  owes  much  to 
fruitful  suggestions  thrown  out  by  the  profound  and  fertile 
mind  of  Leibniz. 

But  while  Leibniz  set  himself  with  a  keen  insight  to 
prove  the  harmony  of  faith  and  reason,  it  lay  beyond  the 
scope  of  his  purpose  to  discuss  the  question  whether  the 
existing  ecclesiastical  religion  did  not  contain  non-essential 


8  INTRODUCTION 

elements.  This  interesting  question  was  raised  and  de- 
bated by  the  Deistic  writers  in  England  during  a  period 
that  extended  from  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  well 
into  the  eighteenth  century.  The  criticism  of  the  Deists 
was  marked,  no  doubt,  by  the  defect  in  historical  insight 
which  was  common  to  the  age.  It  was  an  unhistorical 
assumption  that  Christianity  was  the  corruption  of  an 
original  "  natural  religion,"  a  corruption  due  to  priestcraft. 
Just  as  unhistorical  was  it  to  suppose  that  this  "  natural 
religion,"  rational  and  ethical  in  its  features,  was  the 
original  religion  of  men.  Indeed,  "natural  religion,"  with 
its  well  denned  "  notes,"  was  as  much  a  fiction  as  "  the 
state  of  nature"  of  eighteenth-century  theorists.  Still 
this  attempt  to  draw  out  the  essentials  of  religion  in 
general  was  in  its  way  an  anticipation  of  the  task  of  a 
philosophy  of  religion.  For  the  Philosophy  of  Religion 
has  as  part  of  its  problem  to  distinguish  the  permanent 
from  the  accidental  in  religion,  and  to  exhibit  those 
constitutive  principles  which  underlie  all  religions.  But 
it  was  the  purely  rational  side  of  religion  which  interested 
the  Deists,  and  like  their  age  they  were  ignorant  of  the 
forces  which  go  to  the  making  of  religion.  Hume,  writing 
a  little  later,  showed  his  remarkable  acuteness  by  pointing 
out  some  of  the  real  influences  which  go  to  develop  the 
religious  consciousness.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to 
appreciate  the  significance  of  the  psychological  side  of 
religion,  and  his  Natural  History  of  Religion  contains 
many  discerning  remarks  on  the  workings  of  feeling,  senti- 
ment, and  reflexion  in  the  growth  of  religion. 

Kant's  theory  of  religion  suffers  just  as  much  as  his 
ethical  theory  from  his  neglect  of  psychology.  His 
Religion  ivithin  the  Limits  of  Mere  Reason,  in  its  spirit  and 
outlook,  remains  true  to  the  eighteenth-century  tradition. 
His  ideal  is  a  rational  and  ethical  religion,  purged  of  alien 
elements,  and  emancipated  from  all  that  savours  of  intoler- 
ance and  superstition.  According  to  Kant  the  content  of 
religion  is  just  the  performance  of  our  moral  duties  con- 
ceived as  commands  of  God.  There  is  a  certain  severity 


THE   GROWTH    OF    RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY  9 

and  simplicity  in  the  Kantian  conception,  but  it  does  no 
justice  to  the  inner  nature  and  motives  of  the  religious 
consciousness.  In  truth,  if  Kant  had  grasped  the  idea  of 
historic  development,  if  he  had  realised  the  part  played 
by  religion  in  the  life  of  culture,  he  would  have  found  it 
impossible  to  reduce  religion  to  an  appendage  of  morality. 

The  rebirth  of  philosophy  in  Kant,  and  the  change  in 
temper  and  ideals  which  marked  the  transition  to  the 
nineteenth  century,  had  the  most  important  effects  on 
religious  conceptions.  The  narrow  rationalism  and  the 
superficial  acuteness  which  characterised  the  previous 
age,  and  appeared  conspicuously  in  the  criticism  of 
religion,  were  gradually  dissipated  by  a  larger  sympathy 
begotten  of  a  new  feeling  for  historic  values.  Men  were 
beginning  to  realise  that  ideas  and  institutions,  as  well  as 
society  itself,  must  be  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of 
development  if  they  were  to  be  appreciated  fairly.  It 
need  hardly  be  said  that  this  modern  attitude  was  favour- 
able to  the  better  understanding  of  religion,  for  it  meant 
a  broader  way  of  looking  at  religious  phenomena  and  a 
deeper  insight  into  the  motives  and  forces  which  were  at 
work  in  the  evolution  of  religion.  As  a  symptom  of  the 
fresh  spirit  which  was  growing  up,  we  may  refer  first  to 
the  work  of  Schleiermacher.  His  Eeden  (1799),  delivered 
in  the  full  flush  of  the  Komantic  movement,  transports  us 
into  a  spiritual  world  far  removed  from  that  of  Religion 
within  the  Limits  of  Mere  Reason.  Eecognising  early  the 
significance  of  feeling  in  religion,  he  never  lost  sight  of 
it ;  and  through  all  the  changes  of  his  keen  and  progres- 
sive mind,  he  continued  to  treat  the  feeling-experience  as 
fundamental  and  religious  doctrines  as  the  outcome  of 
reflexion  on  this  experience.  The  Church  or  Christian 
society  was  the  historic  medium  of  this  spiritual  experience, 
and  the  Church's  doctrines  were  the  derivative  ideas  by 
which  from  time  to  time  its  inner  life  was  defined  and 
formulated.  Religion  is  a  continuous  development,  and  it 
has  not  yet  reached  its  final  dogmatic  form.  Schleier- 
macher's  interest  in  historic  religion  was  centred  in 


10  INTRODUCTION 

Christianity,  but  in  tracing  the  psychological  origin  of 
religion  to  the  feeling  of  dependence,  he  tried  to  reach  a 
universal  principle  which  was  constitutive  of  the  religious 
consciousness.  That  principle  he  saw  reflected  with  varying 
degrees  of  truth  in  the  multiplicity  of  human  religions. 
And  while  his  direct  contribution  to  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion  was  less  important  than  Hegel's,  he  has  a  better 
appreciation  of  the  psychological  nature  of  religion. 

The  historical  value  of  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Religion 
is  not  easily  overrated ;  and  this  can  be  acknowledged  by 
those  who  do  not  accept  his  principles  or  results.  He 
was  the  first  to  draw  out  in  large  lines  the  task  to  which 
the  religious  philosopher  must  set  himself,  and  to  illustrate 
the  comprehensive  spirit  in  which  he  should  strive  to 
fulfil  that  task.  A  Philosophy  of  Religion,  he  shows, 
must  include  in  its  purview  primitive  religion,  the  ethnic 
religions,  and  Christianity :  it  has  to  make  plain  that  all 
religions  express  the  principle  of  the  religious  relationship 
and  reveal  in  varying  degrees  the  ideal  of  religion.  Through 
the  manifold  forms  of  religion  the  Absolute  Religion  was 
in  process  of  becoming,  and  was  finally  manifested  in  the 
fulness  of  the  time.  Hegel  recognises  that  religion  is  a 
universal  and  necessary  attitude  of  the  human  spirit,  and 
his  endeavour  to  show  that  all  the  historic  religions  are 
related  as  moments  in  a  great  developmental  process  was 
interesting  and  impressive.  At  that  time,  now  nearly  a 
century  ago,  the  means  for  properly  interpreting  the 
primitive  and  the  historic  religions  were  meagre,  and 
Hegel's  generalisations  are  hasty  and  sometimes  crude. 
Moreover,  his  theory  of  religious  development  as  a  dialectic 
process  led  to  much  arbitrariness  in  the  construction  put 
upon  historical  materials.  But  the  value  of  his  catholic 
outlook  is  not  impaired  by  the  questionable  nature  of 
some  of  his  results.  After  Hegel  there  has  been  general 
agreement  that  a  Philosophy  of  Religion  must  deal  with 
religion  as  a  universal  phenomenon  in  human  history,  and 
a  fact  to  be  studied  in  its  evolution.  Nor  has  Hegel's 
conception  of  the  function  and  method  of  a  Philosophy 


THE   GROWTH    OF    RELIGIOUS    PHILOSOPHY         11 

of  Keligion  lost  its  significance.  In  religion,  he  held,  we 
have  ideas  presented  to  us  in  the  form  of  imaginative  or 
figurative  thinking,  and  philosophy  has  to  purify  this 
material  in  order  to  raise  it  to  the  speculative  form  of 
truth.  As  we  look  back  on  Hegel's  work  our  faith  in 
his  dialectic  may  be  feeble,  and  our  confidence  in  the 
power  of  thought  to  solve  all  mysteries  may  not  be  great. 
Still  beyond  doubt  the  application  of  philosophy  to  religion 
does  involve  a  criticism  of  ordinary  religious  ideas  so  as 
to  bring  them  into  consistent  relations  with  the  larger 
whole  of  knowledge.  The  shortcomings  of  Hegel's  religious 
philosophy  are  well  known.  It  is  impossible  to  characterise 
the  great  national  religions  by  any  single  epithet,  however 
striking  and  suggestive.  His  psychology  of  religion  is 
meagre  and  defective :  the  high  importance  of  feeling  is 
ignored,  and  the  function  of  thought  is  much  exaggerated. 
But  from  the  historical  point  of  view  the  stimulus  which 
Hegel  gave  to  the  study  of  the  whole  subject  was  decisive, 
and  this  ought  to  be  frankly  recognised. 

In  following  the  growth  of  religious  philosophy  after 
Hegel,  I  can  only  try  to  indicate  the  broad  movements 
with  some  of  their  characteristic  representatives.  The 
first,  and  in  some  ways  the  most  important,  of  these  move- 
ments was  that  mainly  initiated  by  Hegel  himself,  and 
may  be  described  as  Absolute  or  Speculative  Idealism.  A 
common  feature  of  this  school  of  thought  is  a  monistic 
idealism  which  treats  nature  and  finite  minds  as  differentia- 
tions of  the  all-inclusive  Absolute.  Yet  in  carrying  out 
this  principle  there  have  been  many  divergences,  and 
the  interpretation  of  religion  has  varied  greatly  according 
as  stress  was  laid  on  the  unity  of  the  Whole  or  on  the 
reality  of  the  differentiations  within  it.  From  Hegel's 
death  in  1831  up  to  and  beyond  the  middle  of  the 
century,  the  bearing  of  Speculative  Idealism  on  religious 
problems  was  a  subject  of  engrossing  interest  in  Germany. 
But  the  movement  found  expression  rather  in  Speculative 
Theology  than  in  Philosophy  of  Keligion  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  term.  Good  illustrations  of  the  work  done 


12  INTRODUCTION 

in  this  field  are  Vatke's  Die  menschliche  Freiheit,  and,  at 
a  later  date,  Biedermann's  Christliche  Dogmatik.1  The 
latter  work  is  a  very  thoughtful  and  able  attempt  to 
elevate  the  theology  of  the  Church,  conceived  as  a  matter 
presented  in  the  form  of  figurative  thought,  into  the  form 
of  speculative  truth.  Though  Biedermann  in  his  epistem- 
ology  came  to  stand  on  independent  ground,  the  general 
principle  of  his  treatise  is  Hegelian :  and  he  is  at  one  with 
Hegel  in  overlooking  the  importance  of  psychology  and  in 
magnifying  the  function  of  reason  in  religion.  Nor  does 
he  abandon  the  conviction  that  Speculative  Theology  can 
reach  the  truth  and  express  it  in  a  final  form. 

The  tendency  seen  in  Biedermann  to  follow  an  inductive 
method  in  dealing  with  religious  problems  is  much  more 
pronounced  in  Pfleiderer,  whose  Philosophy  of  Religion 
claims  to  be  developed  on  "  a  historical  basis."  2  His  con- 
tention is,  that  only  a  careful  study  of  the  developing 
religious  consciousness,  through  the  various  forms  which  it 
has  assumed,  can  enable  us  to  rise  to  the  conception  of  its 
real  meaning.  Pfleiderer's  contribution  to  the  fulfilment 
of  this  task  is  important  and  valuable.  But  while 
Pfleiderer  follows  the  idealistic  method  of  solving  differ- 
ences by  referring  them  to  a  deeper  unity  when  he  is 
dealing  with  problems  of  development,  his  relation  to 
Speculative  Idealism  is  really  one  of  considerable  in- 
dependence. He  abandons  any  attempt  to  force  historical 
material  into  a  priori  categories,  and  acknowledges  the 
importance  of  the  psychology  of  religion.  He  realises  the 
significance  of  the  feelings  and  the  will  in  religion,  and 
he  recognises  that  the  value-judgments  of  spiritual  ex- 
perience must  play  a  part  in  giving  content  to  the  idea  of 
God.  Nor  does  he  contend  that  our  reason  can  penetrate 
all  things  and  evolve  truth  in  an  absolutely  final  form. 
It  is  in  keeping  with  these  reservations  that  Pfleiderer 
adopts  an  epistemology  of  a  realistic  type,  and  this  enables 
him  to  reject  the  pantheism  into  which  Hegelian  idealism 

1  1st  ed.,  Zurich,  1869  ;  2nd  ed.,  revised,  in  1884. 

2  2nd  ed.  1884,  Eng.  tr.  1886  ;  3rd  ed.,  revised  and  reconstructed,  1896. 


THE   GROWTH   OF    RELIGIOUS    PHILOSOPHY         13 

naturally  drifts.  At  the  same  time  the  question  arises, 
whether  these  gradual  modifications  of  an  original  stand- 
point should  not,  in  the  interests  of  consistency,  have 
carried  him  further  than  he  has  gone  in  the  direction  of 
some  form  of  personal  idealism.  Be  this  as  it  may, 
Pfleiderer's  luminous  and  suggestive  treatment  of  the  mass 
of  historical  materials  which  confront  the  religious  philo- 
sopher constitutes  a  weighty  contribution  to  the  subject. 

As  also  representing  Speculative  Idealism  in  Germany, 
it  may  be  enough  to  refer  to  the  works  of  E.  von  Hartmann 
and  A.  Dorner.  In  von  Hartmann  the  influence  of 
Schopenhauer  blends  with  that  of  Hegel  and  gives  a 
pessimistic  colour  to  his  philosophy  of  religion.  But  he 
by  no  means  neglects  the  study  of  the  development  of 
religion,  and  he  has  a  just  appreciation  of  the  relative 
values  of  the  psychical  elements  in  the  religious  conscious- 
ness. The  curious  thing  is  that  the  writer,  despite  his 
study  of  the  psychological  facts,  should  conclude  that 
religious  ideas  and  values  are  determined  by  the  un- 
conscious life,  of  whose  deeper  movement  consciousness  is 
the  surface  manifestation.  At  the  same  time,  Hartmann's 
theory  of  an  unconscious  Absolute  helps  him  to  overcome 
a  difficulty  which  Speculative  Idealists  had  not  frankly 
faced,  the  difficulty,  namely,  how  a  self-conscious  Absolute 
could  embrace  personal  selves  as  elements  in  its  own 
being.  According  to  the  "  Concrete  Monism  of  the 
Unconscious,"  the  Absolute  only  becomes  conscious  through 
its  specific  determinations  in  finite  minds :  religion  is  really 
a  process  in  which  the  Deity  works  out  his  own  redemption 
by  gradually  returning  to  the  Unconscious  from  the 
consciously  felt  ills  of  the  world.  Von  Hartmann's  con- 
ception of  religion  is  interesting,  for  it  represents  the  issue 
of  an  attempt  to  think  out  consistently  the  implications  of 
an  idealistic  Monism.  How  far  it  does  justice  to  the  facts 
of  the  religious  consciousness  is,  of  course,  another  matter.1 

1  The  reader  who  has  not  time  to  go  through  Hartmann's  larger  works 
on  religion  will  find  a  clear  and  compact  statement  of  his  views  in  his 
Grundriss  der  Eeligionsphilosophie,  1909. 


14  INTRODUCTION 

Along  with  Hartmann  may  be  mentioned  A.  Dorner, 
whose  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  is  also  conceived  in  the 
spirit  of  Speculative  Idealism  without  being  subversive  in 
its  conclusions.1  Dorner  is  influenced  by  Schelling  as 
much  as  by  Hegel,  and  he  retains  the  old  confidence  in  the 
power  of  reason  to  construct  a  metaphysics  of  the  Divine 
Nature.  In  keeping,  too,  with  the  older  method  is  his 
endeavour  to  define  the  ideal  of  religion,  and  to  develop 
a  metaphysical  theory  of  the  Absolute,  before  treating 
religion  historically  and  psychologically.  In  the  Divine 
Nature,  Dorner  distinguishes  ideal  and  real  aspects  which 
correspond  to  the  reason  and  will  in  man.  The  world,  as 
he  conceives  it,  is  a  developing  system  of  potencies, 
"  planted  out "  and  sustained  by  God,  and  it  advances  by 
a  growing  preponderance  of  the  ideal  over  the  real  element 
till  it  comes  to  its  goal  in  self-consciousness.  With 
Dorner,  as  with  Pfleiderer,  Speculative  Idealism  is  modified 
by  a  realistic  theory  of  knowledge ;  and  by  this  means  he 
avoids  the  conclusion  of  thoroughgoing  monism,  that  there 
is  only  one  real  Being. 

Our  account  of  the  interpretation  of  religion  at  the 
hands  of  Speculative  Idealists  would  be  incomplete  without 
some  reference  to  the  contributions  of  Neo-Hegeliau 
writers  in  Great  Britain  and  America.  It  may  suffice  to 
mention  here  the  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion 
by  Principal  Caird;  Dr.  Edward  Caird's  Evolution  of 
Religion ;  Professor  Watson's  Philosophical  Basis  of 
Religion ; 2  and  the  Gifford  Lectures  of  Professor  Eoyce,  of 
Harvard,  on  The  World  and  the  Individual.  The  first 
three  works  are  closely  related  in  spirit  and  standpoint, 
while  the  last  is  written  from  a  more  independent  position. 
As  compared  with  earlier  idealists  of  the  same  school, 
these  writers  allow  more  for  the  working  of  the  psychical 
elements  other  than  thought ;  they  recognise  the  need  of 
rising  to  the  speculative  interpretation  of  religion  through 

1  Orundriss  der  Religionsphilosophie,  1903. 

3  Prof.  Watson  has  recently  given  a  fuller  statement  of  his  views  in  his 
Gifford  Lectures  on  The  Interpretation  of  Religious  Experience. 


THE   GROWTH   OF    RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY        15 

a  study  of  its  concrete  manifestations ;  and  the  stereotyped 
method  of  the  dialectic  is  not  obtruded.  But  it  would  be 
too  much  to  say  that  the  importance  of  the  Psychology  of 
Eeligion  is  fully  realised,  or  that  metaphysical  principles 
do  not  unduly  determine  the  treatment  of  historical 
materials.  And  all  these  authors  are  at  one  in  this 
respect,  that  they  find  the  ultimate  explanation  of  religion 
in  an  idealistic  monism  which  identifies  God  with  the 
Absolute.  It  is,  for  instance,  a  feature  of  that  very 
suggestive  book,  The  Evolution  of  Eeligion,  that  differences 
are  constantly  resolved  into  a  more  fundamental  unity 
which  is  supposed  to  explain  them.  The  ultimate  unity, 
or  final  synthesis,  is  an  Absolute  Mind  which,  in  the 
process  of  returning  on  itself  from  its  differentiations  in 
nature  and  finite  spirits,  explains  why  the  religious  con- 
sciousness in  time  advances  from  an  imperfect  to  a  fully 
adequate  form. 

A  far-reaching  idealism  of  this  kind  will  always  have 
a  fascination  for  some  minds,  while  others  find  it  beset 
with  insuperable  difficulties.  Neither  the  individual  nor 
the  personal  aspects  of  experience,  it  is  urged,  can  be 
accounted  for  in  a  system  which  reduces  the  contrast  of 
the  divine  and  human  to  a  shadowy  difference  of  degree. 
If  justice  is  to  be  done  by  an  idealistic  philosophy  to 
these  personal  elements,  the  principles  on  which  it 
proceeds  ought  to  undergo  serious  modification.  The 
feeling  that  the  personal  values  of  life  must  be  conserved 
lay  behind  the  movement  of  thought  which  may  be 
broadly  termed  Personal  Idealism.  The  beginnings  of 
this  tendency  can  be  traced  to  the  work  of  Lotze  (1817- 
81),  though  he  cannot  himself,  without  qualification, 
be  called  a  personal  idealist.  His  writings,  however, 
are  a  sustained  protest  against  the  formalism  which 
finds  the  core  of  reality  in  the  form  of  thought,  and 
discovers  the  secret  of  development  in  the  play  of  a 
dialectic  movement.  In  sharp  contrast,  Lotze  emphas- 
ises the  individual  and  personal  sides  of  experience:  in 
harmony  with  this  he  holds,  that  our  ethical  and  religious 


16  INTRODUCTION 

value-judgments  must  help  to  determine  our  idea  of  God 
as  ultimate  Ground  of  reality.  Lotze  discovers  the  path 
to  the  deeper  nature  of  things  in  what  "  ought  to  be " 
rather  than  in  what  is.  This  strongly  marked  ethical 
element  in  his  thinking,  and  his  claim  that  personal 
spirits  have  an  independence  of  their  own,  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  Lotze  is  in  sympathy  with  idealism  of  the 
personal  type.  In  his  ultimate  metaphysical  synthesis, 
however,  he  falls  back  on  an  all-embracing  monism,  and 
apparently  reduces  finite  selves  to  elements  within  the 
life  of  the  one  real  Being.  The  ethical  and  metaphysical 
sides  of  Lotze's  thought  are  not  coherent :  his  ethical 
postulates  require  more  than  his  metaphysical  principles 
can  concede.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  in  one 
aspect  of  his  philosophy,  Lotze  clearly  points  to  a  theistic 
view  of  the  universe  which  does  justice  to  personal  values. 
The  writings  of  Eudolf  Eucken  and  Hermann  Siebeck 
must  also  be  cited  as  supporting  a  personal  or  theological 
type  of  idealism.  Eucken  lays  the  greatest  stress  on  the 
independence  of  the  spiritual  life,  a  life  which  breaks  with 
the  merely  natural  and  sensuous  existence  and  wins  for 
itself  a  higher  content.1  His  system  is  a  persistent  protest 
against  the  tendency  of  naturalism  and  pantheism  to  treat 
personality  as  an  outgrowth  or  a  part  of  nature.  Man  is 
a  spiritual  personality  whose  life  is  rooted  in  an  eternal 
and  transcendent  life ;  to  become  the  organ  of  this  renew- 
ing and  transforming  life  is  the  spiritual  vocation  of  man 
and  the  true  form  of  his  self -activity.  Eucken  lays  much 
weight  on  the  fact  that  the  entrance  into  this  life  of  the 
spirit  is  not  a  simple  and  natural  development :  it  means  a 
reversal  of  the  lower  order  of  existence,  a  process  of 
"  conversion,"  to  use  the  language  of  theology.  He 
accentuates  the  immediacy,  the  freedom  and  the  self- 
activity  of  this  personal  life  in  man,  and  it  would  be 
inconsistent  for  him  to  regard  the  Eternal  and  Divine  Life 

1  Eucken's  philosophy  has  a  markedly  religious  colouring  throughout: 
hence  it  has  been  termed  a  "theological  idealism."  His  most  direct 
treatment  of  religion  is  his  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion.  Eng.  tr.  1911. 


THE   GROWTH   OF    RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY          17 

as  impersonal  Man,  we  are  told,  meets  the  Divine  in  the 
depth  of  his  being,  and  by  dependence  on  and  union  with 
God  he  overcomes  the  world.  The  precise  relation  of  the 
divine  and  human  is  obscure  in  Eucken's  philosophy,  and 
on  this  ultimate  question  he  takes  refuge  in  a  mysticism 
which  evades  clear  thinking.  But  his  system  in  its  spirit 
and  aim  is  a  personal  idealism ;  and  if  monism  is  its  goal, 
the  goal  can  only  be  reached  as  the  consummation  of 
personal  endeavour.  In  his  personalism,  and  in  his  way 
of  regarding  the  temporal  and  historic  life,  Siebeck  is  in 
close  sympathy  with  Eucken.1  These  thinkers  unite  in 
conceiving  this  earthly  form  of  existence  to  be  directly 
grounded  in  an  eternal  and  supramundane  Eeality,  and 
both  argue  that  only  from  this  point  of  view  can  historic 
development  receive  a  satisfying  meaning  and  value.  But 
Siebeck  is  less  a  man  of  one  idea,  and  he  pays  much  more 
attention  to  the  historic  phases  and  the  psychological 
elements  of  the  religious  consciousness.  In  particular,  he 
connects  the  notion  of  personality  in  a  lucid  and  convincing 
way  with  the  process  of  historic  development.  Human 
personality  is  the  crown  of  world-evolution;  and  the 
developed  personal  self,  a  union  of  logical  thinking  and 
ethical  value,  has  its  ground  and  explanation  in  a  Eeality 
which  is  final  Cause  and  supreme  Good.  There  is 
interaction  between  the  human  and  the  divine,  not 
identification;  the  spirit  of  religion,  in  virtue  of  which 
man  transcends  this  world  to  find  his  goal  in  a  higher 
world,  is  the  outcome  of  the  working  of  the  Divine  Spirit. 
The  theistic  idea  stands  out  more  sharply  in  Siebeck  than 
in  Eucken,  and  he  has  made  a  valuable  contribution  to  the 
Philosophy  of  Eeligion. 

In  British  thought  Idealism  of  the  personal  type  is 
also  at  work,  though  it  has  not  yet  had  time  to  come  to 
a  full  and  systematic  expression  of  itself.  Here,  as  in 
Germany,  this  form  of  idealism  arose  out  of  a  reaction 
against  the  older  form.  The  failure  of  Absolute  Idealism 
to  do  justice  to  the  facts  and  interests  of  the  personal 

1  Fid.  his  Lehrbuch  der  Religionsphilosophie,  1893. 
2 


18  INTRODUCTION 

life  was  emphasised  a  good .  many  years  ago  by  Professor 
Pringle-Pattison,  though  little  was  attempted  in  the  way 
of  reconstruction.1  More  recently  Dr.  Hastings  Rashdall 
has  spoken  in  the  same  sense,  and  with  an  eye  on  the 
religious  problem.2  Especially  relevant  in  this  connexion 
is  Dr.  Rashdall's  insistence,  that  while  finite  spirits  are 
dependent  on  God,  neither  they  nor  their  experiences  are 
God.  God,  then,  is  limited  by  the  presence  of  minds 
which  are  other  than  Himself ;  and  though  all  experiences 
are  experiences  of  minds,  God  is  not  the  all-inclusive 
whole  of  experience.  The  Absolute,  if  we  use  the  term, 
can  apply  only  to  the  whole  system :  God  and  the 
Absolute  are  not  identical.  If  we  are  to  choose  between 
terms,  the  Deity  is  better  described  as  finite  than  infinite. 
No  doubt  this  line  of  thought  presents  difficulties,  but  on 
the  whole  it  is  better  fitted  to  do  justice  to  religious 
experience  than  the  theory  against  which  it  is  a  reaction. 
A  complete  Philosophy  of  Religion  is,  however,  a  task 
which  Personal  Idealists  in  this  country  have  not  hitherto 
undertaken.  The  reason  probably  is,  that  the  system 
requires  much  fuller  statement  and  development  on  its 
philosophical  side  than  it  has  yet  received. 

Alongside  the  two  movements  we  have  been  de- 
scribing, there  has  been  a  third  movement  which  offers 
a  contrast  to  both  in  its  character  and  aims.  This  move- 
ment might  be  designated — a  little  vaguely,  perhaps,  yet 
not  inaccurately — empirical.  Those  who  represent  it, 
when  they  admit  the  possibility  of  a  speculative  inter- 
pretation of  religion,  do  so  under  reserve  and  with  quali- 
fications. If  they  concede  the  importance  of  psychology 
and  epistemology  in  treating  religious  problems,  they 
reject  the  idea  of  a  metaphysics  of  the  Absolute  as  a 
vain  and  barren  enterprise.  This  school  lays  stress,  not 
on  speculative  theory,  but  on  the  historic  facts  of  religion 
and  the  actual  working  of  the  religious  consciousness 

1  In  his  Hegelianism  and  Personality,  1887. 

2  Vid.  his  Philosophy  and  Religion,  1909  ;  also  his  essays  in  the  volumes 
entitled,  Personal  Idealism  and  Contentio  Veritatis. 


THE   GROWTH   OF   RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY          19 

In  Germany  this  empirical  tendency  asserted  itself  in  the 
first  instance  by  way  of  protest  on  the  part  of  theology 
against  the  exaggerated  claims  of  Speculative  Idealism. 
The  movement,  as  we  see  it  in  Eitschl  and  his  followers, 
was  in  substance  an  attempt  to  banish  metaphysics  from 
religion,  and  to  base  theology  on  the  facts  of  historic 
revelation  and  the  truths  of  spiritual  experience.  The 
nature  of  the  Christian  spirit  is  not  reached  by  means 
of  a  philosophical  theory,  but  by  examining  its  actual 
working  and  making  clear  what  is  implied  in  that.  Those 
who  follow  this  method  find  that  metaphysical  considera- 
tions are  remote  from  the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion, 
which  is  really  a  system  of  values  historically  grounded. 
The  religious  consciousness  moves  in  the  domain  of  judg- 
ments of  value :  it  eschews  the  mechanical  methods  and 
causal  explanations  of  natural  science,  and  regards  things 
ideologically.  In  other  words,  the  religious  mind  looks 
away  from  the  world  of  causal  facts  to  a  realm  of  ends 
and  ideals,  and  organises  its  experience  in  a  series  of  values 
which  lead  up  to  a  Supreme  Value.  Hence  the  truth  of 
the  Christian  religion  is  not  guaranteed  by  philosophical 
reflexion :  its  certainty  is  practical  and  historic,  and  rests 
on  the  way  its  values  work  and  have  worked  in  human 
lives.  The  sharp  severance  of  the  scientific  and  religious 
methods  is  characteristic  of  Eitschl  and  his  followers,  and 
closes  the  door  to  any  attempt  to  reconcile  them  from  a 
higher  standpoint.  A  similar  hard  and  fast  separation 
between  science  and  religion  was  drawn  by  the  late 
Auguste  Sabatier  in  his  Philosophy  of  Keligion.1  While 
recognising  the  function  of  a  theory  of  religious  knowledge, 
M.  Sabatier  casts  doubt  on  a  speculative  interpretation  of 
religion.  For  religion,  he  maintains,  is  an  affair  of  the 
heart,  not  of  the  reason,  and  is  perpetually  born  of  the 
living  needs  of  the  human  spirit.  The  soul,  hampered 
and  oppressed  by  the  limitations  of  its  material  environ- 
ment, is  driven  to  seek  deliverance  by  an  act  of  faith,  and 
through  faith  it  wins  the  good  it  seeks.  The  man  destitute 
1  Esyuisse  d'une  Philosophic  de  la  Religion,  3rd  ed.  1897. 


20  INTRODUCTION 

of  the  inner  religion  of  the  spirit  is  not  convinced  by 
reasons  in  its  favour,  while  the  man  who  has  spiritual 
religion  finds  these  reasons  superfluous.  In  the  hands  of 
Sabatier  a  theory  of  religious  knowledge  is  an  instrument 
with  which  to  purge  theology  from  uncritical  and  irrelevant 
accretions ;  and  it  teaches  us  to  refine  theological  dogmas 
into  spiritual  symbols.  But  it  is  not  a  stage  on  the  way 
to  a  rational  comprehension  of  the  ultimate  meaning  of 
religion. 

A  like  refusal  to  go  beyond  the  limits  of  an  epistemo- 
logical  theory  in  dealing  with  religion  is  made  by  Hoffding.1 
While  Hoffding's  inclination  is  towards  what  he  calls  a 
"  critical  monism,"  he  thinks  that  the  ultimate  ground  of 
thought  and  things  transcends  our  knowledge:  we  can 
only  use  figures  and  analogies  in  regard  to  it,  and  these 
cannot  be  strictly  true.  The  idea  of  construing  religion 
through  a  philosophical  theory  of  the  ultimate  nature  of 
God  and  man  is  silently  discarded  by  Hoffding,  and  he 
tries  instead  to  determine  its  significance  and  value  as  a 
developing  factor  in  human  culture.  The  interpretation 
which  he  gives  to  religion  puts  weight  on  its  functional 
character  in  human  evolution :  it  is  a  way  of  regarding 
the  world  and  life  which  subserves  the  cause  of  ethical 
progress.  Science  has  confidence  to  pursue  its  enterprise, 
for  it  postulates  a  continuity  between  the  elements  of 
experience  which  is  the  condition  of  understanding  them ; 
the  scientific  man  is  guided  in  his  research  by  the  con- 
viction that  no  energy  in  the  universe  is  lost  but  is 
conserved  through  all  its  transformations  ;  and  the  religious 
man,  too,  has  his  helpful  postulate — faith,  namely,  in  the 
continuity  of  value  in  the  world-process.  The  postulate  of 
religion  as  well  as  the  essence  of  the  religious  consciousness, 
according  to  Hoffding,  is  a  faith  that  the  value  or  good 
in  the  world  maintains  itself  amid  all  fluctuations.  Such 
a  conception  of  religion  gives  no  scope  for  reverence  or 
love ;  at  most  it  admits  of  a  vague  elation  that  the  good 
of  the  world  persists  unbroken  amid  the  shocks  and 

1  Keligiansphilosophie,  1901.     Eng.  tr.  1906. 


THE   GROWTH   OF    RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY          21 

accidents  of  time.  For  the  truth  of  religion  lies  in  a 
functional  attitude  rather  than  in  a  relation  to  a  supra- 
mundane  Object ;  it  is  faith,  not  so  much  in  a  value  as 
in  the  behaviour  of  values  in  the  world-process.  And  I 
presume  we  are  to  conclude  that  such  a  faith  is  useful 
and  an  inspiration  to  successful  endeavour.  Hoffding's 
Religionsphilosopliie  is  a  bold  and,  in  some  ways,  a  striking 
attempt  to  show  that  religion  may  be  properly  understood 
as  a  specific  mode  in  which  man  relates  himself  to  mundane 
experience  and  which  is  helpful  to  social  development. 
The  difficulty  of  course  is,  that,  under  the  conditions 
stated,  faith  would  lack  any  sure  and  steadfast  ground  for 
the  validity  of  its  postulate.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  the 
universe  can  guarantee  either  its  own  stability,  or  the 
conservation  of  the  values  which  exist  within  it. 

In  general  sympathy  with  the  empirical  treatment  of 
religion  is  the  Pragmatist  School  of  thinkers,  which  at 
present  is  a  distinct  feature  in  British  and  American 
philosophy.  The  pragmatic  doctrine  that  truths  are  values, 
when  applied  to  religion  brings  Pragmatists  into  close 
contact  with  Eitschlians.  The  former  as  well  as  the 
latter  put  forward  the  test  of  "  working- value  "  in  order 
to  distinguish  the  living  from  the  dead  elements  in  the 
theology  of  the  Churches.  The  pragmatic  principle  of 
working- value  is,  however,  sufficiently  elastic  to  permit 
of  considerable  diversity  in  the  manner  of  elaborating 
a  religious  philosophy.  For  example,  by  taking  the  word 
"  practical "  in  a  narrower  or  a  wider  sense,  a  pragmatist 
might  reject  or  accept  the  help  of  metaphysics  in  dealing 
with  the  problem  of  religion.  And  the  exact  form  and 
scope  of  a  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  after  an  orthodox 
pragmatic  type  is  not  yet  quite  clear.  If  we  may  trust 
the  late  Professor  James,  in  his  volume  on  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience,  Scholastic  Theology  and  the  Meta- 
physics of  the  Divine  Attributes  do  not  enter  into  the 
practical  religious  life :  they  are  therefore  useless,  and  so 
untrue.  The  tendency  of  Pragmatism  is,  no  doubt,  to  deal 
with  religion  by  an  empirical  method,  the  method  which 


22  INTRODUCTION 

seeks  to  exhibit  the  implications  of  those  values  at  work 
in  the  actual  religious  life  of  men.  A  speculative  con- 
ception of  God,  for  instance,  which  could  not  be  related 
in  a  vital  way  to  the  needs  and  purposes  of  religious 
conduct  would  fail  to  commend  itself  to  Pragmatists. 
"  On  pragmatistic  principles,  if  the  hypothesis  of  God  works 
satisfactorily  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word,  it  is  true. 
Now  whatever  its  residual  difficulties  may  be,  experience 
shows  that  it  certainly  does  work,  and  that  the  problem 
is  to  build  it  out  and  determine  it  so  that  it  will  combine 
satisfactorily  with  all  the  other  working  truths."1  The 
ultimate  test,  therefore,  is  empirical,  what  works  in 
experience. 

The  three  broad  movements  of  thought  here  rapidly 
sketched  embody  the  main  tendencies  which  at  present 
are  active  in  the  sphere  of  religious  philosophy.  No  one 
of  them  can  be  said  to  be  dominant.  Minor  movements, 
ethical  or  mystical,  I  have  had  to  pass  over  in  this  short 
survey.  But  perhaps  it  ought  to  be  mentioned  that  an 
attempt  has  been  made  in  quite  recent  times — and  it 
may  grow  in  importance — to  treat  religion  on  purely 
sociological  lines.  The  ancestor  of  this  way  of  thinking 
was  no  doubt  Comte ;  but  it  has  a  certain  affinity  with 
the  empirical  method  we  have  been  discussing,  although 
its  results  are  more  subversive  of  traditional  conceptions. 
Thinkers  of  this  school  often  make  much  of  the  biological 
analogy,  society  being  treated  as  an  organism  and  religion 
as  one  of  its  functional  developments.  The  common  note 
of  works  of  this  type  is,  that  they  eliminate  entirely  the 
transcendent  aspect  of  religion,  and  construe  it  as  an 
ethical  activity  directed  to  social  good.  This  is  the  stand- 
point of  writers  like  Paul  Natorp  in  Germany  and  Stanton 
Coit  in  England.  In  France  similar  ideas  received  out- 
spoken expression  in  the  well-known  book  of  Guyau, 
Ulrrdigion  de  VAvenir.  According  to  Guyau,  religion  is 
a  kind  of  explanation,  cast  in  a  mythical  and  symbolic 
form,  of  all  things  after  the  analogy  of  human  society. 

1  Pragmatism,  by  William  James,  p.  299. 


THE   GROWTH   OF   RELIGIOUS   PHILOSOPHY          23 

Instead  of  the  older  conception  of  Deity,  the  non-religious 
man  of  the  future  will  rather  admire  the  Cosmos  and  its 
forces  on  the  one  hand,  and  devote  himself  to  the  social 
ideal  on  the  other.1 

This  brief  outline  of  the  growth  of  religious  philosophy 
will  show  that  the  confidence  in  speculative  thought,  which 
marked  the  first  half  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  has  not 
been  maintained  to  its  close.  We  rather  witness  a  growing 
disinclination  to  magnify  reason,  and  a  tendency  to  doubt 
the  possibility  of  final  solutions.  Even  those  who  trace 
their  intellectual  lineage  to  the  "kings  of  thought"  are 
content  to  rule  over  a  more  modest  domain.  Hence 
greater  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  facts  of  religious 
experience,  and  to  the  mode  of  its  working  in  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  race.  The  result  has  been  that,  if  religious 
philosophers  do  not  put  forward  ultimate  explanations 
with  the  old  confidence,  they  have  gained  a  firmer  grasp 
of  the  nature  of  religion  as  a  psychological  and  social 
phenomenon.  Of  last  century  it  has  been  said  :  "  No  age 
has  been  so  rich  in  rival  theories,  so  subversive  of  old 
ideas,  so  destructive  of  principles  which  stood  firm  for 
many  ages."2  This  is  particularly  true  in  the  sphere  of 
religion.  As  the  outcome  of  this  ferment  we  have 
diverging  types  of  religious  thought,  but  no  one  dominant 
theory  of  religion.  The  religious  philosopher  in  the  new 
century  has  the  advantage  of  a  larger  and  better  sifted 
body  of  materials  than  his  predecessor  in  any  former  time. 
He  is  thereby  spared  from  falling  into  errors  into  which 
earlier  labourers  in  the  same  great  field  fell,  and  for  which 
they  could  hardly  be  blamed.  But  the  task  of  a  con- 
structive philosophy  of  religion  has  in  some  ways  become 
more  difficult.  For  the  abundance  of  materials  has  in- 
creased the  complexity  of  the  problem,  and  made  it 
harder  to  reach  a  synthesis  which  does  justice  to  all  the 
elements. 

1  Vid.  the  Introduction  of  L'Irrttigion  de  VAvenir. 

2  Merz,  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  i. 
p.  80. 


24  INTRODUCTION 


^.—PROBLEM  AND  METHOD. 

The  foregoing  survey  will  help  to  show  how  the  problem 
of  a  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  has  gradually  defined  itself  as  the 
outcome  of  recent  thought.  It  is  the  problem  of  the  final 
meaning  of  religion  as  a  constituent  element  in  human  life 
and  development.  With  the  decline  of  faith  in  the  older 
dogmatic  and  authoritative  methods  of  treating  religion, 
the  study  has  steadily  grown  in  importance,  and  justly 
claims  the  attention  of  all  reflecting  people  who  are  inter- 
ested in  religion.  But  the  task  to  be  achieved  is  not  a 
simple  one,  and  it  involves  the  combination  of  several 
independent  sciences  or  disciplines  in  the  service  of  a 
central  end.  And  while  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish 
results  which  belong  to  one  subordinate  province  from 
those  of  another,  the  boundary  lines  are  not  always  easy  to 
draw.  The  Psychology  of  Religion,  for  instance,  readily 
passes  into  the  Metaphysics  of  Religion,  and  a  question  of 
genesis  into  a  question  of  ultimate  nature.  It  will  make 
our  way  clearer  if  we  explain  at  the  outset  what  exactly  is 
meant  by  philosophy  and  what  by  religion. 

Philosophy  has  been  defined  as  the  thinking  view  of  the 
world,  and  the  definition  is  true  so  far  as  it  goes.  But 
it  stands  in  need  of  some  amplification  in  order  to  bring 
out  the  specific  character  of  philosophical  thought.  The 
object  of  philosophy  is  experience  in  all  its  variety  and 
fulness,  not  any  single  aspect  of  experience.  Its  aim  is  to 
show  by  reflective  thought  the  ultimate  principles  which 
give  continuity,  meaning,  and  value  to  this  complex  whole 
of  experience.  Its  purpose  is  unification,  its  ideal  the 
organisation  of  experience  in  a  fully  articulated  system. 
Some  thinkers  have  distinguished  and  sharply  contrasted 
the  method  of  philosophy  with  that  of  the  special  sciences. 
But  I  do  not  think  philosophy  can  make  good  a  claim  to 
possess  higher  methods  peculiar  to  itself.  The  task  of  the 
scientist  as  well  as  the  philosopher  is  to  explain,  to  establish 
continuity  and  rationality  in  the  matter  which  is  given. 


PROBLEM    AND    METHOD  25 

Now  it  can  hardly  be  maintained  that  the  philosopher's 
way  of  explaining  is  different  in  kind  from  that,  for  instance, 
of  the  physicist  or  the  biologist.  In  each  case  the  search 
is  for  connecting  and  unifying  principles.  The  difference  is 
not  one  of  method,  but  of  standpoint.  The  standpoint  of  the 
man  of  science  is  restricted :  in  setting  to  work  he  neglects 
a  great  deal  because  it  is  not  relevant  to  his  purpose,  and 
concentrates  his  mind  on  a  certain  aspect  of  reality.  If  he 
is  investigating  the  laws  of  falling  bodies,  he  does  not 
inquire  into  the  cause  of  gravity  or  the  chemical  constitu- 
tion of  material  objects.  Hence  his  explanations  are 
provisional :  they  rest  on  an  act  of  abstraction,  on  a  partial 
study  of  the  facts ;  and  they  are  valid  only  within  the 
given  sphere  and  for  a  specific  purpose.  Philosophy,  on 
the  other  hand,  endeavours  to  reach  ultimate  explanations, 
and  in  so  doing  it  uses  the  analyses  and  conclusions  of 
science  and  reinterprets  them  from  a  higher  and  more  com- 
prehensive point  of  view.  In  this  sense  philosophy  is  the 
universal  science,  the  science  which  seeks  to  organise  and 
evaluate  all  experience  in  the  light  of  final  principles :  it 
completes  the  work  of  the  special  sciences,  correcting  the 
abstractions  they  involve  and  connecting  the  sciences  in  an 
organic  whole.  The  ideal  would  be  a  system  in  which  all 
the  given  elements  found  their  proper  place  and  function. 
If  philosophy  comes  short  in  its  achievement,  this  at  least 
is  its  goal. 

Keligion  calls  for  philosophic  interpretation  because  it 
is  an  aspect,  and  a  very  important  aspect,  of  human  ex- 
perience. Whatever  value  you  put  upon  it,  religion  is  a 
fact  in  man's  history,  and  a  very  arresting  fact  it  is.  A 
contemporary  writer,  in  a  well-known  book,  has  pictured 
the  wonder  and  perplexity  which  the  signs  of  man's 
varied  religious  activity  would  awaken  in  an  imaginary 
visitor  to  this  planet.  Inquiring  into  the  meaning  of  this 
activity,  he  would  be  bewildered  by  the  conflicting  answers 
he  received.  "  He  would  be  driven  to  conclude  he  was 
dealing  with  phenomena  the  laws  and  nature  of  which 
were  little  understood  by  the  people  among  whom  he  found 


26  INTRODUCTION 

himself."  l  And  the  author  goes  on  to  cite  some  of  the 
definitions  of  religion  which  have  been  given  by  eminent 
men  who  have  discussed  the  subject.  It  might  seem, 
then,  we  are  confronted  at  the  outset  with  a  baffling  dif- 
ference of  opinion  about  what  religion  really  is.  Closer 
examination  will  show,  however,  that  many  of  the  defini- 
tions are  not  contradictory,  but  differ  by  emphasising  a 
particular  aspect  of  the  phenomenon  to  the  neglect  of  the 
other  aspects.  They  are  partial  rather  than  false,  inade- 
quate rather  than  mistaken.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  know 
what  religion  means  in  the  organised  society  of  to-day 
sufficiently  well  for  practical  purposes,  and  sufficiently 
also  to  understand  the  general  outlines  of  the  field  we  are 
proposing  to  investigate.  More  exact  delimitation  is  only 
feasible  after  detailed  inquiry.  Indeed  a  full  answer  to 
the  question,  What  is  religion  ?  cannot  properly  be  given 
at  the  outset  and  before  a  patient  examination  of  the 
historic  facts.  This  examination  is  necessary  ere  we  can 
hope  to  draw  a  clear  line  between  what  is  religious  and 
what  is  secular.  We  can  only  realise  how  much  is  involved 
in  religion  by  following  the  course  of  its  development  and 
studying  the  manifold  forms  in  which  the  religious  spirit 
has  expressed  itself.  There  is  a  fallacy  in  the  idea  that 
you  can  grasp  the  true  meaning  of  religion  in  one  of  its 
phases,  say  in  the  most  primitive  form  of  the  religious 
consciousness  of  which  there  is  any  record.  For  the  dif- 
ficulties of  interpretation  in  such  a  case  are  very  great ; 
and  there  is  truth  in  the  contention,  that  we  cannot  rightly 
judge  what  is  in  the  germ  until  we  see  what  comes  out  of 
it.  In  the  growth  of  religion  the  knowledge  of  the  later 
phase  helps  us  to  appreciate  the  earlier :  and  the  study  of 
the  development  in  all  its  stages  is  the  best  guide  to  an 
understanding  of  the  principles  which  are  at  work. 

A     Philosophy    of    Eeligion,    therefore,    presupposes 

religion  as  a  living  fact  in  the  development  of  the  race, 

and  recognises  the  existence  of  inner  experiences  of  which 

religious  acts  are    the    expression.     It    cannot    begin   by 

1  Kidd's  Social  Evolution,  1894,  p.  87. 


PROBLEM    AND    METHOD  27 

selecting  any  particular  religion  as  the  type  or  standard 
by  which  to  judge  the  degrees  of  truth  or  error  in  other 
religions.  At  all  events,  if  such  an  opinion  is  held,  it  can 
only  be  fairly  held  by  the  religious  philosopher  when  it 
emerges  as  the  conclusion  of  a  wide  and  dispassionate 
study  of  the  facts.  There  is  a  provisional  assumption, 
however,  which  I  think  he  is  justified  in  making,  and 
which  the  progress  of  his  study  may  be  trusted  to  verify. 
It  is  that  religion  is  a  normal  and  constant  aspect  of 
human  life,  and  the  utterance  of  a  permanent  need  of 
man's  spirit.  That  religious  ideas  are  the  product 
of  arbitrary  and  accidental  experiences,  which  gave  rise 
to  customs  and  were  maintained  by  tradition,  is  a 
theory  which  has  no  plausibility  at  all.  The  older 
notion  that  religion  was  artificially  invented,  is  now 
universally  admitted  to  be  absurd.  Religion  has  de- 
generate forms,  no  doubt:  religio  may  sometimes  be 
justifiably  taken  in  the  Lucretian  sense  of  superstitio. 
The  fact,  however,  that  we  recognise  forms  of  religious 
deterioration,  is  an  evidence  that  there  are  normal  features 
which  we  believe  a  religion  ought  to  possess :  the  exist- 
ence of  disease  is  conditioned  by  the  fact  of  health,  and 
the  perception  of  defects  implies  a  standard  of  rectitude. 
What  the  normal  features  of  religion  are  we  cannot  decide 
merely  by  a  speculative  theory  of  the  religious  relation- 
ship :  and  just  as  little  can  we  determine  from  a  purely 
empirical  study  of  religious  phenomena  what  religion 
ought  to  be.  On  the  other  hand,  by  examining  experience 
we  may  reach  principles  on  which  experience  itself 
depends  ;  so  the  investigation  of  religious  development  may 
be  the  means  by  which  we  gradually  recognise  and  make 
clear  to  ourselves  those  essential  and  determining  principles 
which  are  implied  in  the  nature  and  growth  of  religion. 

The  problem  of  the  specific  nature  of  religion  did  not 
arise,  in  early  culture.  Slender  differentiation  of  function 
is  a  feature  of  primitive  societies,  and  at  the  primitive 
stage,  religion  had  not  defined  itself  as  a  well-marked 
phenomenon  over  against  other  forms  of  social  activity. 


28  INTRODUCTION 

Keligion  interfuses  itself  with  the  mass  of  social  usages 
and  customs,  and  it  is  often  difficult,  even  after  a 
considerable  study  of  the  subject,  to  say  whether  a 
particular  act  has  a  religious  significance  or  not.  At  this 
epoch  the  individual  accepted  his  religion  very  much  as  he 
accepted  his  language :  it  was  a  part  of  his  social  inherit- 
ance, and  he  appropriated  and  enjoyed  it  without  putting 
to  himself  the  question  why  he  did  so.  But  when  man 
has  entered  on  the  life  of  civilisation,  when  science,  art, 
and  morals  have  begun  to  differentiate  themselves  from 
religion,  then  the  proper  nature  and  meaning  of  religion 
become  a  problem  to  him.  Man  asks  himself  what  is 
the  distinctive  character  of  his  religion,  how  he  is  to 
distinguish  what  is  sacred  from  what  is  secular.  He 
inquires  what  religion  does  for  him,  and  how  far  he  is 
able  to  justify  his  religious  acts  and  beliefs.  Especially 
was  this  the  case  when  a  conflict  of  interest  arose  between 
religion  and  other  elements  of  social  life.  The  question 
became  all  the  more  urgent  when  men  acquired  some 
knowledge  of  religious  systems  other  than  the  one  under 
which  they  had  grown  up.  For  they  were  then  driven  to 
consider  how  to  separate  the  true  from  the  false,  the 
accidental  from  the  essential,  the  permanent  from  the 
changing.  So  religion  passed  from  the  domain  of  things 
accepted  on  authority  to  take  its  place  henceforth  among 
the  problems  of  life.  How  can  man  best  solve  this 
problem  of  the  nature,  function,  and  value  of  religion  ? 
I  have  already  pointed  out  that  only  a  study  of  the 
development  and  the  concrete  forms  of  religion  can  enable 
us  to  understand  its  essential  nature  and  to  define  it. 
And  in  precisely  the  same  way  an  insight  into  its  function 
and  value  can  only  be  gained  by  a  knowledge  of  the  way 
in  which  it  works  and  has  worked  in  various  environments 
and  at  different  stages  of  man's  progress.  Moreover,  by 
keeping  in  contact  with  the  actual  phenomena  of  religious 
experience,  we  guard  ourselves  against  setting  a  subjective 
impression  in  the  place  of  an  objective  fact.  The  develop- 
ment of  religion,  however,  is  an  exceedingly  wide  subject. 


PROBLEM    AND   METHOD  29 

A  great  field  of  inquiry  here  opens  out  before  us,  a  field 
which  up  to  our  own  day  has  not  been  fully  explored. 
And  it  is  too  much  to  expect  that  the  religious  philosopher 
can  personally  traverse  this  broad  territory  and  make 
himself  acquainted  with  all  its  varied  features.  He  must 
call  to  his  aid  other  labourers  who  have  devoted  their 
energies  to  sections  of  the  field,  and  receive  from  them  the 
materials  he  requires.  Of  course,  not  all  the  materials  he 
can  thus  command  are  relevant  to  his  purpose,  and  they 
vary  greatly  in  their  importance.  He  has  therefore  to 
exercise  a  selection  upon  the  mass  of  facts,  and  he  will 
be  guided  in  his  selection  by  the  principle,  that  only  what 
casts  light  on  the  nature  of  religion  comes  properly  within 
his  purview.  Let  me  illustrate  what  is  meant.  A  great  deal 
of  curious  information  in  regard  to  the  practices  of  exogamy 
and  totemism  may  be  set  aside,  because  it  throws  no  light 
on  religion.  But  totem-worship,  on  the  other  hand,  is  an 
important  phase  of  religious  development,  and  has  a  real 
bearing  on  the  historic  growth  of  the  religious  relationship. 
The  sciences  which  offer  materials  to  the  Philosophy  of 
Eeligion  will  be  the  History  of  Eeligions  and  the  Science 
of  Eeligions,  the  former  giving  an  account  of  the  evolution 
of  religions,  and  the  latter  gathering  up  and  classifying  the 
various  phenomena  which  they  exhibit.  The  science  of 
Comparative  Eeligion,  so  far  as  it  has  yet  been  developed, 
will  furnish  knowledge  of  the  common  features  as  well  as 
the  differences  between  religions,  and  will  draw  attention 
to  empirical  laws  or  observed  uniformities  in  the  process 
of  religious  evolution.  It  need  hardly  be  said  how 
important  it  is  to  have  work  of  this  kind  before  us  when 
we  are  trying  to  understand  the  nature  of  religion.  The 
material  which  has  been  gathered  together  by  the  History 
and  the  Science  of  Eeligions  during  recent  years  is  very 
great,  and  even  tends  to  become  embarrassing  to  the 
thinker  who  is  striving  to  evolve  order  and  system  out  of 
the  facts.  Still  the  very  plenitude  of  facts  is  a  safeguard 
against  premature  and  onesided  generalisations. 

But  facts,  regarded  as  mere  facts,  are  of  no  use  to  the 


30  INTRODUCTION 

religious  philosopher :  he  requires  to  find  out  their  meaning. 
In  trying  to  do  this  he  has  to  bear  in  rnind  the  distinctive 
character  of  the  phenomenon  with  which  he  is  dealing. 
The  facts  of  religion  are  decidedly  different  from  facts  in 
the  sphere  of  mechanics  or  biology.  The  difference  is 
this :  the  former  are  the  expressions  of  conscious  minds 
and  wills,  whi1^  the  latter  are  not.  That  is  to  say,  in 
the  natural  sciences  you  can  work  out  your  problem 
without  the  help  of  Psychology,  but  in  religion  you  cannot 
do  so.  Religious  phenomena  are  essentially  reactions  of 
1  the  mind  upon  the  experienced  world,  and  their  specific 
character  is  not  due  to  the  material  environment,  but  to 
the  human  consciousness.  The  formative  factor  is  mind 
or  spirit.  Hence  the  interpretation  of  religious  acts  is 
impossible  without  the  help  of  Psychology,  and  no  student 
of  the  meaning  of  religious  development  can  hope  to 
succeed  without  a  sound  psychological  equipment.  An 
analysis  of  consciousness  and  a  knowledge  of  the 
functions  and  values  of  the  different  psychical  elements 
are  implied  in  an  endeavour  to  read  the  meaning  of 
religious  phenomena.  To  construe,  for  example,  the 
growth  of  religion  through  biological  analogies,  or  by 
means  of  metaphysical  categories,  signifies  that  we  are 
viewing  the  process  ab  extra,  and  are  not  in  sympathetic 
rapport  with  the  interior  and  moving  forces.  Hence,  if  we 
are  to  reach  a  general  conception  of  the  nature  and  mean- 
ing of  religion  through  a  study  of  its  development,  we 
must  regard  that  development  in  the  first  instance  as  a 
continuous  expression  of  the  human  mind  seeking  satis- 
faction for  its  needs.  For  man  makes  religion,  and 
religion  everywhere  bears  the  impress  of  the  human 
mind.  The  broad  similarities  that  run  through  the 
religions  of  the  world  have  their  origin  in  the  common 
mental  structure  of  man.  It  might  seem  that  this  is  a 
superficial  conception  of  religion,  but  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  we  are  not,  at  this  stage,  dealing  with  its 
ultimate  nature  or  final  explanation.  We  are  trying  to 
understand  it  as  a  vital  human  experience.  We  might 


PROBLEM    AND   METHOD  31 

put  the  point  we  are  seeking  to  make  thus :  the  synthesis 
by  which  we  give  meaning  to  the  facts  of  religious 
development  must  be,  in  the  first  instance,  a  psychological 
synthesis.  The  unifying  principle  which  immediately 
underlies  the  multiplicity  of  religious  phenomena  is  the 
psychical  nature  of  man. 

But  the  study  of  the  religious  consciousness  from  the 
psychological  standpoint  brings  out  an  important  fact. 
It  shows  that  the  religious  mind,  as  it  understands  itself 
and  its  own  striving,  looks  beyond  itself  for  the  explana- 
tion of  its  experience.  Eeligion  for  the  religious  can  never 
bs  a  subjective  experience  merely.  In  religion  man's  spirit 
goes  forth  in  faith,  and  makes  demands  on  the  larger  world 
of  which  he  is  a  part.  He  claims  to  know,  and  to  relate 
himself  to  a  Being  above  himself;  to  find  his  goal  in  a 
sphere  which  transcends  the  present  form  of  existence. 
The  problem  then  arises,  Is  this  claim  to  knowledge 
justified  ?  Is  it  consistent  with  the  nature  and  powers 
of  the  human  mind  ?  A  discussion  of  this  subject  will 
involve  an  examination  of  the  different  attitudes  which  it 
is  possible  to  take  up  in  regard  to  the  point  at  issue. 
There  is  the  agnostic  attitude,  which  signifies  that  any 
knowledge  which  claims  to  go  beyond  the  experienced 
world  in  space  and  time  is  illusory  and  must  be  rejected. 
The  so-called  supersensible  world,  dear  to  faith,  is  only 
the  shadowy  projection  of  human  hopes  and  fears.  Then 
it  is  possible  to  take  up  a  position  directly  opposed  to  the 
foregoing,  and  to  maintain  that,  in  principle  at  leastj-y 
thought  can  penetrate  all  things,  and  no  limits  can  be  set 
to  reason.  There  is,  finally,  the  critical  way  of  regarding 
the  problem.  In  this  view  man  has  neither  absolute  nor 
perfect  knowledge,  nor  is  he  closely  bound  down  in  his 
knowing  to  the  world  of  sensible  experience.  The  very 
fact,  it  is  argued,  that  man  can  exercise  a  process  of 
criticism  on  the  claims  of  knowledge  shows  that,  if  human 
knowledge  is  partial,  it  is  also  growing  and  cannot  be 
severely  limited  to  any  determinate  sphere.  But  besides 
this  general  treatment  of  the  scope  of  knowledge  there  is 


32  INTRODUCTION 

also  needed  a  discussion  of  the  validity  of  religious  know- 
ledge in  its  specific  character.  For  religious  cognition 
differs  from  scientific.  The  religious  consciousness  does 
not  primarily  make  its  postulates  in  obedience  to  the 
demands  of  rational  thinking :  it  is  not  impelled  to  make 
them  by  stress  of  pure  logic.  No  doubt  it  may  proceed 
to  justify  its  postulates  by  reflective  thinking,  but  they 
were  already  made  before  they  became  the  object  of 
conscious  reflexion.  In  brief,  these  postulates  are  not 
rational  deductions  but  values :  they  are  values  which  are 
posited  in  response  to  the  demands  of  the  inner  life,  and 
correspond  to  its  needs.  Such  values,  regarded  as  goods 
attaching  to  Keality,  are  apprehended  and  affirmed  by  an 
act  of  faith  on  the  part  of  religious  people.  In  familiar 
language,  men  believe  where  they  do  not  comprehend. 
The  faith -attitude  is  characteristic  of  the  developed  religious 
mind,  and  it  is  the  form  in  which  most  religious  persons 
apprehend  the  object  of  their  worship.  Plainly,  this 
faith  cannot  be  the  antithesis  of  knowledge :  in  fact  it 
must  be  knowledge  of  a  kind,  though  its  free  use  of 
analogy  distinguishes  it  from  the  logical  understanding. 
The  validity  of  faith,  then,  as  the  organ  of  religious 
knowledge,  will  have  to  be  examined,  and  the  relation  of 
faith  to  scientific  knowledge  requires  discussion.  The 
conception  of  value  is  essential  to  faith,  and  so  in  this 
connexion  the  relation  of  value  to  rationality  will  demand 
treatment.  This  naturally  leads  up  to  the  important  and 
difficult  problem  of  the  nature  of  truth,  and  special 
reference  must  be  made  to  the  form  in  which  the  problem 
arises  in  religion. 

The  epistemological  discussion  of  religious  conceptions 
and  standards  of  truth  broadens  into  the  general  question 
of  the  truth  of  religion.  The  notions  of  'function*  and 
*  value '  are  not  self-sufficient ;  we  have  to  deal  with  their 
validity  and  justification.  And  this  is  a  matter  which,  if 
raised  in  the  sphere  of  epistemology,  cannot  finally  be 
settled  there.  To  answer  this  problem  means,  in  the  end, 
that  we  deal  with  the  whole  problem  of  the  nature  and 


PROBLEM    AND   METHOD  33 

significance  of  religion.  Some  thinkers,  we  have  already 
noted,  decline  to  enter  on  this  task.  They  argue  that  a 
metaphysical  inquiry,  such  as  is  here  involved,  must  be 
barren  of  any  sure  results;  and  they  maintain  that  the 
truth  of  religion  is  just  its  practical  value.  But  religion 
itself,  we  must  remember,  claims  that  its  postulates  are 
true,  and  that  in  the  sense  that  they  are  objectively  real ; 
and  we  cannot  deny  man's  competence  to  deal  with  the 
ultimate  problem  without  at  the  same  time  casting  doubts 
on  the  validity  of  these  postulates.  If  we  cannot  make  it 
plain  that  these  demands  are  consistent  with  the  nature  of 
reality,  then  the  demands  can  only  be  justified  on  sub- 
jective grounds,  and  their  validity  becomes  uncertain.  If 
the  religious  spirit  itself  shared  this  uncertainty,  it  could 
not  maintain  itself  in  health  and  vigour.  Let  the  pious 
man  become  convinced  that  his  faith  is  a  sort  of  specula- 
tive venture,  a  wager  which  he  makes  at  his  own  risk  in 
the  hope  that  it  may  turn  out  well,  and  his  faith  will 
dwindle.  "  Probability,"  said  Bishop  Butler,  "  is  the  guide 
of  life  " ;  and  this  is  true  in  many  regions  of  human  affairs. 
In  our  estimate  of  how  others  will  act,  or  how  the  course 
of  events  will  run,  we  make  our  decisions  on  the  strength 
of  what  is  likely,  not  of  what  is  certain  to  happen.  But  a 
religion  founded  on  probabilities  is  a  kind  of  contradiction 
in  terms,  because  the  religious  spirit  lives  and  acts  in  the 
full  assurance  of  faith.  One  might  say,  therefore,  that 
religion  itself  imposes  on  us  the  obligation  of  trying  to 
justify  it  by  philosophical  thought.  For  religion  appeals 
to  the  whole  man,  and  reason  ought  not  to  be  at  constant 
discord  with  feeling  and  will :  otherwise  the  spiritual 
house  is  divided  against  itself  and  it  cannot  stand. 

A  Philosophy  of  Keligion  then,  if  it  is  true  to  its 
task  and  frankly  faces  the  issues  which  it  has  raised, 
cannot  avoid  dealing  with  the  problem  of  the  ultimate 
truth  of  religion.  The  difficulty  of  the  question  is  beyond 
dispute,  but  just  as  little  can  its  importance  be  gainsaid. 
A  psychological  treatment  of  the  subject  leaves  us  in  the 
position  that  we  understand  the  function  and  value  of  our 
3 


34  INTRODUCTION 

religious  postulates ;  we  know  the  part  they  play  in 
normal  religious  lives,  but  we  are  without  assurance  of 
their  validity.  A  justification  can  only  be  given,  if  it  is 
to  be  given  at  all,  by  speculative  thought.  Only  by 
reaching  the  ultimate  ground  of  religion  and  determining 
the  principles  upon  which  religion  depends,  is  it  possible 
for  us  to  appreciate  its  final  meaning  and  to  defend  its 
place  in  human  experience.  The  metaphysical  problem 
here  involved  has  two  aspects,  a  general  and  a  particular. 
In  its  general  aspect  the  question  is  how  we  are  to  reach 
and  determine  the  ground  of  experience  as  a  whole:  in 
other  words, — What  are  the  final  presuppositions  of  the 
world  as  a  system  of  existences  manifested  to  experience  ? 
The  method  of  answering  this  question  is  to  bring  out  by 
reflexion  the  implications  of  an  experience  which  is  an 
orderly  and  connected  whole,  and  to  rest  them  upon  an 
adequate  basis.  So  far  we  have  a  problem  in  general 
Metaphysics  which  must  be  worked  out  as  such.  But 
there  is  also  before  the  mind  of  the  religious  philosopher 
the  further  fact,  that  his  specific  object  is  to  elucidate  the 
final  ground  of  religious  experience.  For  religion  is  a 
characteristic  and  enduring  fact  of  human  life,  and  the 
religious  activity,  throughout  all  its  historic  phases,  forms 
the  most  significant  expression  of  man's  attitude  to  the 
universe.  In  the  developed  personal  life  of  man  his 
religion  is  the  practical  utterance  of  the  ultimate  meaning 
he  reads  into  the  world  and  his  own  existence.  And  it  is 
important  to  bear  in  mind,  that  any  conception  we  reach 
of  the  final  Ground  of  experience  must  be  consistent  with 
this  specific  form  of  consciousness  in  man.  Nay  more, 
such  a  Ground  ought  to  be  able  to  explain  how  it  is  that 
religion  arises  and  persists  in  human  culture.  It  may  be 
argued  that  religion  is  a  changing  thing,  its  claims  are  not 
always  consistent  the  one  with  the  other,  and  we  are  no 
more  bound  to  find  a  place  for  its  demands  in  our  scheme 
of  the  universe  than  for  any  of  the  myriad  forms  of  im- 
aginative belief  which  the  race  has  created.  Yet  is  not 
this  to  prejudge  the  question  ?  We  do  not  dispose  of  a 


PROBLEM    AND    METHOD  35 

phenomenon  by  calling  it  an  illusion, — an  illusion  requires 
to  be  explained.  Moreover,  the  religious  thinker  is  fully 
justified  in  contending  that  there  is  nothing  arbitrary  and 
evanescent  in  religion :  it  is  a  dominant  aspect  of  man's 
experience,  present  in  the  most  primitive  culture,  develop- 
ing with  man's  development,  and  continuing  to  play  a  part 
in  the  maturest  forms  of  civilisation.  The  existence  of 
this  very  distinctive  kind  of  experience  within  the  complex 
totality  of  human  life  is  a  fact  which  a  candid  thinker 
cannot  but  regard  as  important ;  for  it  colours  by  its 
presence  and  activity  the  larger  whole  of  life  within  which 
it  plays  a  part.  Any  philosophic  synthesis  which  left  no 
room  for  it  would,  ipso  facto,  be  condemned  as  inadequate. 

In  elucidating  the  ground  of  religious  experience,  a 
Philosophy  of  Keligion  has  to  examine  and  set  forth 
clearly  the  postulates  which  practical  religion  involves,  and 
this  will  be  the  fruit  of  a  study  of  the  concrete  facts  of 
religious  development.  The  problem,  in  the  first  instance, 
is  historical  and  psychological.  We  put  the  question  of 
validity  aside  in  the  meantime,  and  proceed  to  sift  and 
examine  the  facts.  Not  by  an  induction  on  a  narrow 
basis,  but  by  a  wide  outlook  on  the  phenomena,  must  we 
strive  to  arrive  at  a  conclusion.  It  does  not  follow  that, 
after  we  have  explicated  the  claims  which  the  religious  con- 
sciousness makes  on  reality,  it  is  the  duty  of  a  Philosophy 
of  Keligion  to  justify  these  claims  as  they  stand.  They 
must  be  scrutinised  and  tested,  and,  it  may  be,  revised 
and  restated.  For  religious  experience  is  a  part  of 
experience,  not  the  whole ;  and  the  philosopher  must  keep 
in  view  a  fact  which  the  religious  man  does  not  directly 
consider, — the  fact,  namely,  that  the  postulates  of  religious 
experience  can  only  be  valid  when  they  are  presented  in 
a  form  which  is  consistent  with  the  presuppositions  on 
which  the  total  body  of  experience  rests.  In  the  task  of 
establishing  harmony  between  the  parts,  criticism  and 
modification  of  claims  may  be  necessary,  and  on  this  point 
a  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  will  pronounce  judgment.  I  do 
not  think  it  is  unduly  to  anticipate  the  discussions  which 


36  INTRODUCTION 

follow,  if  attention  is  here  drawn  to  the  truth  that  emerges 
from  a  study  of  working  religion,  the  truth  that  in  religion 
the  teleological  point  of  view  is  dominant.  The  religious 
mind  is  concerned  primarily,  not  with  the  explanation 
of  things,  but  in  adapting  means  to  ends  and  organising 
all  lesser  ends  towards  the  fulfilment  of  a  chief  end,  con- 
ceived to  be  of  highest  worth.  It  regards  experience  and 
treats  things  from  the  standpoint  of  value.  The  religious 
man  surveys  life  sub  specie  loni:  he  relates  values  to  a 
Supreme  Value  or  Good,  and  an  ultimate  Good  becomes 
the  test  and  measure  of  all  other  goods.  To  know,  hold 
converse  with,  and  enjoy  this  Good,  is  the  chief  end  of 
spiritual  endeavour.  There  runs  through  all  religion  the 
impulse  after  communion  and  fellowship  with  a  divine 
Object  that  can  satisfy  the  needs  of  the  soul.  And  in 
developed  religion  this  fellowship  is  recognised  to  be 
ethical  and  spiritual :  it  is  a  communion  of  finite  spirits 
with  a  supreme  and  perfect  Spirit.  The  religious  man 
posits  by  an  act  of  faith  his  supreme  Good :  he  does  so  in 
response  to  the  demand  of  his  inner  life,  which  calls  for  a 
goal  and  completion  to  its  own  spiritual  endeavour.  This 
object  religious  faith  construes  as  a  Person :  for  only  the 
personal  life  makes  values  real,  and  only  personal  com- 
munion can  satisfy  the  soul  which  craves  a  living  embodi- 
ment of  goodness.  Hence  the  validity  of  this  postulate 
of  a  Divine  Personality  becomes  a  central  problem  for 
religious  philosophy.  And  it  is  clear  that  if  the  postulate 
be  entirely  rejected,  the  religious  consciousness  must  be 
treated  as  more  or  less  illusory. 

In  working  out  the  metaphysical  problem  of  religion, 
there  are  two  lines  of  thought  which  have  to  be  kept  in 
view.  The  experienced  world,  for  which  an  ultimate 
Ground  is  sought,  unfolds  itself  before  us  in  a  double 
aspect :  it  is,  on  the  one  hand,  a  connected  system  of 
existences,  and,  on  the  other,  a  system  of  values.  These 
two  aspects  are  not  rigidly  separated :  indeed,  they  blend 
together  in  the  world-process.  That  which  is  fact  seen 
from  one  point  of  view,  from  another  may  be  regarded  as 


PROBLEM    AND    METHOD  37 

value.  The  system  of  existences  is  the  basis  on  which  the 
kingdom  of  values  develops :  this  kingdom  grows  up  out 
of  the  living  interactions  of  persons  in  a  social  whole. 
Within  this  personal  life  of  the  social  system,  religion 
maintains  itself  as  a  specific  phase  of  culture.  The  regress 
from  the  experienced  world  upon  its  ultimate  Ground  must 
therefore  reach  a  Final  Cause  which  is  adequate  to  sustain 
the  world  in  its  variety  and  complexity,  in  its  higher  and 
in  its  lower  aspects.  To  arrive  at  an  ultimate  Source  of 
things  which  apparently  explained  the  uniformity  and 
continuity  of  existence,  but  left  no  room  for  the  kingdom 
of  values  which  has  emerged  in  the  historic  development, 
spells  failure  in  the  task.  Closer  examination  will  show 
that  an  explanation  which  does  not  explain  the  higher  as 
well  as  the  lower  is  not  even  an  explanation  of  the  lower. 
We  only  know  how  much  is  in  a  thing  by  seeing  what  it 
comes  to  be.  The  old  principle — which  goes  back  to 
Aristotle — still  holds  good,  that  the  lower  is  rather  to  be 
understood  through  the  higher  than  the  higher  through 
the  lower.  The  Ground  of  experience  manifested  in  the 
form  of  a  connected  system  of  beings  must  likewise  be  the 
Sufficient  Eeason  of  personal  spirits  and  their  value- 
experiences.  To  put  it  in  a  slightly  different  way:  the 
Supreme  Being,  conceived  as  First  Cause  of  the  natural 
order,  must  also  be  thought  as  the  Source  of  the  moral 
and  spiritual  order  of  the  world.  Whether  it  is  possible 
to  establish  a  continuity  between  the  realms  of  fact  and 
value  through  the  Ground  on  which  both  depend,  is  a 
question  which  naturally  arises.  But  it  is  not  possible 
to  answer  it  without  an  examination  and  discussion  of  the 
conditions  involved.  In  any  case  the  ultimate  Ground  of 
things  must  possess  such  a  character  that  it  can  bring  into 
being  and  uphold  the  internally  connected  whole  of  facts 
and  the  graduated  kingdom  of  values.  Otherwise,  we  have 
not  reached  a  principle  which  explains  religion. 

A  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  which  succeeded  in  determin- 
ing the  Sufficient  Ground  of  man's  secular  and  his  religious 
experience  would  thereby  be  in  a  position  to  assign  its 


38  INTRODUCTION 

place  and  meaning  to  religion  within  the  system  of  ex- 
perience. The  intention  of  the  religious  thinker  is  to 
furnish  an  answer  to  this  problem,  although  it  may  well 
be  that  his  achievement  falls  short  of  his  purpose.  In 
trying  to  execute  this  task,  he  is  at  the  same  time  attempt- 
ing to  connect  the  knowledge  given  in  the  form  of  religious 
ideas  with  the  larger  whole  of  knowledge,  and  to  establish, 
if  he  can,  harmonious  relations  between  them.  This  is  not 
an  obligation  which  presses  on  the  religious  mind  in  the 
actual  process  of  realising  the  religious  relationship ;  for 
its  knowledge,  as  we  have  seen,  is  in  the  form  of  faith,  and 
is  gained,  not  by  the  exercise  of  the  understanding,  but 
through  the  needs  and  demands  of  the  inner  life.  It  is 
otherwise  with  the  speculative  thinker  who  sets  himself 
to  think  out  the  meaning  of  experience,  and  of  religion  as 
a  form  of  experience.  The  endeavour  to  establish  a 
coherent  relation  between  the  various  spheres  of  knowledge 
in  the  light  of  a  Supreme  Principle  must  result,  in  so  far 
as  it  is  successful,  in  giving  a  deeper  meaning  to  the  parts 
than  is  possible  from  a  standpoint  within  any  one  of  them. 
A  Philosophy  of  Religion,  therefore,  in  the  discharge  of  its 
synoptic  function,  strives  to  complete,  and  it  may  be  to 
correct,  the  knowledge  we  possess  in  a  religious  or  spiritual 
form.  Only  from  the  issue  of  an  inquiry  of  the  kind  are 
we  in  a  position  to  speak  of  the  truth  or  ultimate  meaning 
of  religion,  and  so  to  go  beyond  the  treatment  of  it  in 
terms  of  function  and  social  value.  If  a  metaphysics  of 
the  ultimate  Ground  of  experience  transcends  human 
capacity,  as  Kant,  for  example,  believed,  then  it  is  plain 
that  a  Philosophy  of  Religion  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word 
is  not  possible.  For  Psychology,  with  the  help  of  Episte- 
mology,  gives  but  a  partial  treatment  and  is  silent  on 
ultimate  issues. 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  short  statement  of  the  case 
that  the  problem  of  a  Philosophy  of  Religion  is  complicated 
and  difficult.  When  we  rise  to  the  height  of  the  issues 
which  are  involved,  we  find  ourselves  embarking  on  an 
arduous  speculative  enterprise ;  for  we  are  setting  ourselves 


PROBLEM    AND    METHOD  39 

to  answer  the  hard  metaphysical  question  of  the  ultimate 
nature  of  reality.  A  religious  philosophy  which  is  dumb 
on  this  matter  has  left  its  work  unfinished.  But  apart  from 
this,  the  task  is  not  easy  because  of  the  wide  and  diversi- 
fied nature  of  the  field  which  has  to  be  covered  in  the 
course  of  the  investigation.  The  origins  of  religion  and 
its  primitive  manifestations  require  a  competent  discussion 
of  the  anthropological  questions  which  have  come  to  the 
front  in  recent  years :  and  the  treatment  of  the  developed 
forms  of  religion,  necessary  in  order  to  understand  its 
nature,  means  an  adequate  knowledge  of  the  History  of 
Eeligions.  Then  the  Psychology  of  Eeligion,  resting  as  it 
does  on  General  Psychology,  must  guide  us  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  religious  phenomena.  Finally,  by  way  of 
epistemological  discussion,  we  have  to  proceed  to  a  specu- 
lative theory.  A  religious  thinker  can  hardly  be  expected 
to  put  himself  forward  as  an  expert  in  all  these  different 
fields,  and  especially  in  an  age  when  limitation  and  con- 
centration are  more  and  more  coming  to  be  the  condition 
of  original  work  in  any  department.  Still,  he  must  have 
an  adequate  knowledge  of  several  sciences ;  and  he  cannot 
afford  to  be  ignorant  of  any  one  of  these  if  his  work  is  not 
to  suffer  in  consequence.  There  remains  the  task  of 
correlating  these  different  lines  of  research,  of  giving  to 
each  its  due,  and  of  unifying  them  in  the  service  of  a 
central  end.  This  is  a  work  of  some  delicacy,  and  it  is 
not  likely  that  the  individual  student  is  without  some  bias 
in  one  direction  or  another.  The  speculative  treatment  of 
religion,  for  example,  is  easily  overlaid  by  the  historical,  and 
may  become  vague  and  inconclusive  in  consequence.  Just 
as  easily  may  Psychology  be  ousted  from  its  proper 
function  by  Metaphysics,  and  in  the  result,  theory  and  facts 
may  not  harmonise.  The  latter  danger  will  certainly  be 
lessened  if  we  advance  gradually  from  the  study  of 
religion  in  its  development  to  its  speculative  interpretation. 
And  not  until  we  mount  to  the  speculative  standpoint  can 
we  overlook  the  wild  fields  through  which  we  have  passed, 
and  appreciate  the  features  of  the  whole. 


40  INTRODUCTION 

At  the  beginning  of  this  discussion  it  was  pointed  out 
that  a  Philosophy  of  Religion  could  not  properly  make  any 
one  religion  the  norm  and  standard  of  truth.  If  such  is 
the  case  it  is  a  result  to  be  reached,  not  a  thing  to  be 
assumed.  But  just  as  unscientific  would  it  be  for  the 
philosopher  to  apply  himself  to  his  task  in  the  conviction 
that  no  religion  is  true,  or  that  all  are  equally  false.  An 
initial  prejudice  like  this  bars  the  way  to  fair  treatment 
and  dispassionate  conclusions.  At  the  same  time  the 
religious  philosopher,  though  he  should  go  to  his  work 
with  an  open  mind,  ought  to  have  sympathy  with  religion 
and  some  personal  experience  of  it.  Apart  from  this 
sympathy  there  cannot  be  an  adequate  valuation  of 
religious  experience  and  an  insight  into  spiritual  motives. 
In  the  case  of  material  facts,  mechanically  related,  the 
external  standpoint  will  suffice.  But  in  religion  the  facts 
are  primarily  psychical,  and  are  the  revelation  of  human 
thought,  feeling,  and  will.  In  the  duty  of  appreciation, 
personal  sympathy — the  capacity  through  our  own  inner 
life  to  enter  into  the  feelings  and  aspirations  embodied  in 
the  phenomena  of  religion — is  a  condition  of  a  discerning 
interpretation.  Nevertheless  the  sympathy,  to  be  of 
service,  must  be  of  the  catholic  kind  which  is  wider  than 
race  or  creed :  nihil  humani  a  me  alienum  puto.  And 
this  broadly  human  outlook  ought  to  go  hand  in  hand 
with  a  single-minded  love  of  truth,  and  with  the  honest 
desire  to  seek  and  to  find  it.  There  are  "idols  of  the 
den "  as  well  as  "  idols  of  the  market-place " ;  and  a 
thinker  must  be  on  his  guard  against  the  one  as  well  as 
against  the  other.  The  student  of  religion  is  working  in 
a  domain  which  is  largely  under  the  sway  of  the  feelings, 
and  the  temptation  is  strong  to  allow  the  prejudices  to 
warp  the  judgment.  Not  without  effort,  not  without 
discipline,  can  he  hope  to  see  the  truth  and  see  it  whole. 


PHILOSOPHY   OF   RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY       41 

C.— THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION  IN  EELATION 
TO  (1)  PHILOSOPHY,  AND  (2)  THEOLOGY. 

It  will  help  to  give  greater  definiteness  to  our  concep- 
tion of  a  Philosophy  of  Eeligion,  if  we  consider  briefly  the 
relation  in  which  it  stands  to  Philosophy  and  to  Theology. 
The  answer  to  the  first  question  would  seem  at  first  sight 
to  be  quite  simple :  the  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  is  just  the 
application  of  philosophical  principles  and  methods  to 
religion  regarded  as  a  matter  given.  The  speculative  mind 
is  directed  to  a  certain  aspect  of  experience,  and  reports 
the  results  of  its  examination.  Formally  this  is  clear 
enough,  but  in  the  practical  working  out  of  the  problem 
a  great  deal  will  depend  on  our  conception  of  the  actual 
scope  and  powers  of  philosophical  thought.  If  we  maintain 
the  possibility  of  a  completed  System  of  Philosophy,  then 
we  cannot  concede  to  the  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  any  in- 
dependence of  the  System.  Like  a  member  of  an  organism, 
it  has  a  well-marked  place  and  function  assigned  to  it,  and 
its  meaning  essentially  depends  on  its  relation  to  the  whole 
of  which  it  is  a  part.  Now  it  will  probably  be  granted  by 
most  people  that  the  aim  of  Philosophy  is  system :  it  seeks 
to  rationalise,  it  strives  to  make  manifest  the  systematic 
unity  of  the  universe  upon  which  the  connexion  and 
coherency  of  its  elements  rest.  Accomplishment,  however, 
may  come  short  of  intention;  and  it  matters  much  in 
settling  the  question  we  have  in  mind  whether  a  speculative 
system  is  an  ideal,  a  regulative  conception  which  we  use 
to  guide  our  thought,  or  is  a  realised  fact.  The  latter,  it 
is  well  known,  was  the  belief  of  Hegel,  though  it  is  not 
likely  that  many  thinkers  in  our  own  day  would  admit 
that  Philosophy  has  achieved  so  much.  Still  his  idea  of 
the  organic  whole  of  the  speculative  sciences  is  of  interest 
to  us  in  the  present  connexion,  for  it  is  a  profound  and 
suggestive  attempt  to  show  the  precise  place  which  a 
Philosophy  of  Eeligion  occupies  in  a  fully  articulated 
speculative  System. 


42  INTRODUCTION 

According  to  Hegel,  Philosophy,  in  its  dialectic  move- 
ment or  process  of  explicating  itself,  is  also  the  explication 
of  religion.1  The  speculative  System  as  well  as  the 
Philosophy  of  Religion  has  God  for  its  object,  God  con- 
ceived as  the  Absolute.  But  the  Philosophy  of  Religion 
differs  from  the  other  philosophical  sciences  in  beginning 
with  the  idea  of  God  instead  of  reaching  it  at  the  last :  in 
the  one  case  it  is  the  terminus  a  quo,  in  the  other  the 
terminus  ad  quern.  Again,  while  Philosophy  treats  the 
Absolute  as  primarily  Logical  Idea,  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion  regards  it  as  object,  the  mind  or  spirit  which 
appears  or  reveals  itself.  Religious  doctrine  presents  the 
idea  of  the  self-revealing  God  in  the  form  of  figurative 
thought :  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  criticises  and  purifies 
these  representations  in  order  to  raise  them  to  the 
speculative  form.  To  put  the  theory  succinctly :  the 
Philosophy  of  Religion  shows  that  the  truth  of  religion 
is  the  speculative  Idea  of  God ;  while  Philosophy  shows 
us  how  the  Idea  or  Absolute  has  differentiated  itself  in 
nature,  in  spirit,  and  in  religion  as  a  phase  of  the  move- 
ment of  spirit. 

Without  entering  into  detailed  criticism,  certain  general 
remarks  suggest  themselves.  There  is,  it  appears  to  me, 
an  element  of  truth  in  the  Hegelian  conception  of  the 
relationship  now  under  review.  A  Philosophy  of  Religion 
depends  on  Philosophy:  it  is  the  application  of  philo- 
sophical thought  to  a  specific  phase  or  stage  of  experience 
in  order  to  determine  its  general  meaning  and  value.  The 
explanation  of  any  aspect  of  experience  must  be  governed 
in  its  methods  and  principles  by  the  methods  and  principles 
by  which  we  explain  experience  as  a  whole.  The  idealistic 
interpretation  of  experience,  for  example,  carries  with  it 
as  a  consequence  a  Philosophy  of  Religion  constructed  on 
idealistic  lines.  But  the  assertion  that  Philosophy  can 
develop  a  complete  System  which  gives  a  full  and  final 
meaning  to  each  of  its  parts,  must  be  subjected  to  serious 
qualifications.  Reality  can  never  be  entirely  absorbed  in 
1  Phil,  der  Keli?i<m,  vol.  i.  p.  21  ff. 


PHILOSOPHY   OF   RELIGION   AND    PHILOSOPHY       43 

the  process  of  rationalising  it,  and  explanation  itself  rests 
in  the  end  on  postulates  that  cannot  be  transformed  into 
logical  elements  in  a  system.  We  do  not  comprehend  a 
thing  by  bestowing  a  name  upon  it ;  and  the  constant 
presence  of  unrationalised  elements  makes  a  final  System 
an  unattained  ideal.  We  therefore  deny  that  Philosophy 
has  such  a  mastery  over  its  materials,  that  it  can  exhibit 
in  the  light  of  a  system  the  precise  meaning  and  value  of 
every  aspect  of  experience.  Owing  to  the  presence  in  the 
universe  of  much  which  is  unexplained,  ultimate  unification 
cannot  be  other  than  provisional.  And  if  this  be  so,  we 
must  claim  for  the  special  philosophical  disciplines  a  greater 
measure  of  independence  than  was  conceded  to  them  by 
Hegel.  For  each  in  its  way  is  contributing  to  the  develop- 
ment of  a  system  rather  than  exactly  determined  by  it. 
This  is  apparent  enough  in  the  case  of  religion.  There  is 
more  in  the  religious  consciousness  than  can  be  derived 
from  any  dialectic  development  of  consciousness  in  general, 
and  religious  philosophy  has  the  facts  directly  before  it 
and  handles  them  on  its  own  responsibility.  It  should 
deal  faithfully  with  the  many  and  varied  phenomena  of 
religion,  whether  it  succeed  in  giving  them  an  adequate 
philosophical  interpretation  or  no.  The  relation  of  the 
Philosophy  of  Eeligion  to  Philosophy  is  rather  one  of 
interaction  and  co-operation  than  of  complete  logical 
dependence.  In  practice  at  all  events  this  is  so ;  and  it 
cannot  be  otherwise,  since  the  idea  of  a  completed  philo- 
sophical System  remains  an  ideal. 

But  the  claim  for  a  certain  independence  on  the  part 
of  a  Philosophy  of  Keligion  ought  not  to  be  pressed  too 
far.  The  general  standpoint  from  which  it  treats  experi- 
ence, and  the  forms  and  conceptions  it  uses  in  dealing 
with  religious  experience,  are  derived  from  Philosophy. 
It  cannot  arbitrarily  create  special  forms  and  methods  for 
its  own  service ;  it  must  draw  them  from  the  common 
speculative  inheritance  that  has  come  down  from  the  past. 
The  dominant  Philosophy  of  the  age  supplies  the  principles 
which  men  apply  to  religion  in  order  to  develop  a  theory 


44  INTRODUCTION 

of  religious  experience,  and  it  determines  in  a  general  way 
the  character  of  a  religious  philosophy.  If  the  prevailing 
type  of  philosophical  thought  at  a  particular  period  be 
idealistic,  dualistic,  or  realistic,  it  will  be  reflected  in  the 
way  men  interpret  the  meaning  of  religion.  The  Deistic 
notion  of  religion,  for  instance,  is  the  reflexion  of  a  general 
philosophical  tendency  or  temper  of  mind :  so  likewise, 
the  speculative  theologies  and  religious  philosophies  of  the 
post-Kantian  epoch  are  deeply  influenced  by  the  far- 
reaching  idealism  which  prevailed.  It  may  be  added  that 
Idealism  is  the  form  of  philosophical  thinking  which  leads 
1  most  readily  to  a  philosophy  of  religion,  inasmuch  as  mind 
or  spirit  is  of  primary  value  both  for  idealism  and  religion. 
Materialism,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  form  of  thought  which 
is  antagonistic  to  religion,  and  when  it  is  accepted,  it 
leaves  no  room  for  a  philosophical  theory  of  spiritual 
experience.  The  only  task  left  for  the  materialist  in 
respect  of  religion  would  be  to  demonstrate  that  it  is  and 
must  be  an  illusion. 

The  difficulties  of  any  attempt  to  isolate  the  Philosophy 
of  Religion  from  Philosophy  become  plainer  when  we 
remember  that  the  philosophical  treatment  of  religion  is 
not  a  simple  process.  It  involves  Psychology  and  Epistem- 
ology,  Ethics  and  Metaphysics ;  and  to  suppose  that  a 
*  religious  thinker  can  evolve  principles  for  himself  in  each 
of  these  departments  is  absurd.  In  every  case  he  is 
dependent  on  the  work  already  done  in  these  provinces, 
and  this  even  when  he  tries,  as  he  ought  to  do,  to  think 
things  out  for  himself,  Were  he  foolish  enough  to 
attempt  to  cut  himself  loose  from  the  philosophical  in- 
heritance of  his  age,  he  could  not  entirely  succeed  in 
doing  so.  A  purely  religious  philosophy,  standing  on  its 
own  ground,  though  it  appeals  to  a  certain  type  of  mind, 
is  not  a  workable  conception ;  for  it  is  not  possible  to 
dissever  religious  experience  from  other  forms  of  experi- 
ence, and  in  striving  to  understand  religion  it  is  also 
necessary  to  look  beyond  it. 

The  objection  to  a  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  which  re- 


PHILOSOPHY   OF   RELIGION   AND    PHILOSOPHY       45 

cognises  a  general  dependence  on  Philosophy,  has  been 
urged  from  the  side  of  Theology,  and  especially  by 
theologians  who  are  hostile  to  Metaphysics.  The  supreme 
truth  of  religion,  it  is  held,  is  contained  in  Christianity, 
which  is  the  revealed  religion,  and  the  most  and  best  we 
can  do  is  to  explicate  and  state  systematically  the  truths 
it  contains.  In  recent  times,  Kitschl  has  given  outspoken 
expression  to  this  view,  and  has  argued  strongly  against 
the  intrusion  of  metaphysics  into  the  sphere  of  religion. 
In  his  short  work,  Theologie  und  Metaphysik  (1881),  he 
takes  his  stand  on  Christianity  as  a  historical  revelation, 
and  protests,  not  without  force,  against  the  fashion  of 
importing  into  it  metaphysical  ideas  which  are  alien  to  its 
substance.  If  men  are  resolved  to  philosophise  about 
religion,  he  tells  us  there  is  but  one  way  to  do  so  to  any 
profit,  and  that  is  to  set  out  from  the  Christian  idea  of 
God  as  scientifically  valid,  and  to  develop  a  world-view  in 
dependence  upon  it.  In  other  words,  we  cut  the  Philosophy 
of  Eeligion  clear  from  Philosophy  by  identifying  it  with 
a  Philosophy  of  Christianity,  and  by  developing  our  own 
religious  categories  and  principles.  This  conception  of  a 
Christian  Philosophy  of  Keligion  finds  favour  with  some 
in  our  own  day,  and  one  can  understand  the  desire  for  a 
kind  of  spiritual  philosophy,  preserving  the  religious 
interest  throughout,  and  removed  from  the  fluctuations  of 
speculative  opinion.  Yet  the  conception  does  not  appear 
to  be  tenable,  and  it  would  be  hard  to  defend  it  success- 
fully against  various  objections.  We  have  already  argued 
that  it  is  impossible  to  develop  a  religious  metaphysics 
which  neither  draws  from  nor  depends  on  metaphysics  in 
general.  There  is  a  fallacy  in  the  notion  that  you  can 
find  the  whole  truth  in  any  particular  phase  of  experience, 
however  important ;  and  for  a  like  reason  no  religion  can 
be  isolated  from  the  rest  without  losing  significance  in 
consequence.  It  has  been  said  that  the  man  who  knows 
no  book  but  the  Bible,  does  not  even  know  it  rightly ;  and 
it  is  the  same  with  a  religion.  No  single  aspect  of  reality 
is  "  cut  off  with  a  hatchet "  from  the  remainder,  and  to 


46  INTRODUCTION 

know  any  one  thing  you  must  see  its  relations  to  other 
things.  Only  to  this  large  outlook  do  the  characteristic 
elements  in  a  given  religion  stand  forth ;  and  to  under- 
stand the  ethical  and  spiritual  value  of  Christianity,  one 
must  recognise  not  merely  its  distinction  from,  but  its 
relations  to  other  religions.  Christianity  is  supreme  not 
because  it  is  severely  separate  from  all  other  types  of 
religion,  but  because  it  is  their  goal  and  completion. 
Hence  a  Philosophy  of  Christianity,  if  it  were  to  rise  to 
the  fulness  of  its  task,  would  perforce  widen  out  into  a 
Philosophy  of  Religion.  And  the  latter,  in  its  turn,  cannot 
successfully  deal  with  religious  experience  in  abstraction 
from  the  rest  of  experience.  In  other  words,  it  must 
perform  its  work,  recognising  its  relations  to  and  receiving 
help  from  Philosophy  as  the  universal  Science.  We  cannot 
philosophise  in  compartments,  and  in  the  search  for  truth, 
breadth  is  necessary  as  well  as  concentration.  The  idea, 
then,  of  a  Christian  Philosophy  of  Religion  which  has  its 
own  form  and  content,  while  it  is  inspired  by  a  sincere 
purpose,  is  not  right  in  theory  nor  feasible  in  practice. 
We  can  either  have  a  Christian  Theology  or  a  Philosophy 
of  Religion,  but  we  cannot  properly  combine  the  two.  It 
is  not  possible  at  one  and  the  same  time  to  preserve  the 
religious  authority  which  is  claimed  for  the  one,  and  to 
maintain  the  freedom  and  largeness  of  vision  which  are 
demanded  by  the  other. 

2.  We  pass  now  to  the  second  question,  the  relation 
in  which  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  stands  to  Theology. 
The  two  differ  distinctly  in  their  scope,  and  this  is  evident 
after  the  slightest  examination.  When  we  use  the  term 
Philosophy  of  Religion,  there  is  no  doubt  about  the  field 
of  study  to  which  we  refer.  It  is  religion,  as  a  universal 
phenomenon  in  human  experience,  which  we  are  proceeding 
to  examine.  But  the  word  Theology,  used  to  denote  a 
system  of  Dogmatics,  is  ambiguous.  The  further  query 
will  follow :  What  theology  ?  Is  it  Jewish,  Christian,  or 
Mohammedan  ?  If  it  be  Christian,  we  have  still  to  find 
out  whether  it  is  Roman  Catholic  or  Protestant.  The 


PHILOSOPHY   OF   RELIGION   AND   THEOLOGY        47 

term  therefore  requires  qnalification  ere  we  understand 
definitely  what  is  meant.  In  its  nature  a  theology  is  an 
articulated  system  of  religious  beliefs  or  doctrines  which 
has  been  developed  from  some  historic  religion.  In  in- 
tention it  is  a  statement  of  the  truths  which  have  proved 
themselves  the  working- values  of  a  given  religion :  and  it 
strives  to  present  them  in  an  intelligible  form,  so  that 
they  can  be  taught,  and  serve  as  a  bond  of  union  for  a 
religious  community  or  Church.  The  proper  office  of 
theology  is  not  to  criticise  the  religious  experience  out  of 
which  it  grew,  but  rather  to  deal  faithfully  with  that 
experience,  and  report  what  is  implied  in  it.  What  is 
called  "  Speculative  Theology,"  which  seeks  to  raise 
religious  doctrines  to  a  philosophical  form  by  exercising 
a  free  criticism  upon  them,  is  better  ranked  with  religious 
philosophy. 

The  significance  of  theology  in  relation  to  religion 
will  be  better  appreciated  if  we  indicate  briefly  the 
process  by  which  it  comes  to  birth  and  develops. 
Theology  always  presupposes  the  existence  of  a  living 
religion,  and  religions  which  have  advanced  to  a  certain 
stage  naturally  produce  theological  doctrines.  Theology  is 
anticipated  and  prepared  for  by  tendencies  which  exist  in 
the  early  forms  of  religion.  The  centre  of  a  religion  is 
the  cultus,  and  the  primitive  way  of  explaining  the  tradi- 
tional acts  done  in  the  cultus  is  to  recite  myths  or  legends 
about  them.  This  was  a  crude  though  obvious  plan  of 
imparting  a  kind  of  meaning  to  religious  usages  handed 
down  from  the  immemorial  past,  from  the  days  when  men 
moved  in  a  world  of  instinctive  beliefs,  and  reflective 
thought  had  not  asserted  its  claims.  With  the  great 
development  of  the  personal  consciousness  which  took 
place  after  the  formation  of  national  religion  the  rude  form 
of  reflexion  passed  into  a  higher  form,  and  man  began  to 
make  a  conscious  endeavour  to  explain  and  generalise  the 
meaning  of  his  religious  rites  and  customs.  The  cultus 
is  still  the  centre  which  offers  a  relatively  stable  material 
upon  which  reflexion  is  exercised  and  out  of  which 


48  INTRODUCTION 

religious  doctrines  are  fashioned :  these  express  the  mean- 
ing and  value  which  the  community  attaches  to  its 
religious  activity.  There  are  various  causes  which 
stimulate  theological  construction  in  a  religious  society : 
for  instance,  the  expediency  of  presenting  religious  truth 
in  a  shape  which  can  be  taught ;  the  need  of  defining 
what  is  true  in  opposition  to  rival  religions  and  to 
heretical  doctrines ;  and,  finally,  the  felt  obligation  of 
meeting  the  demands  which  science  and  philosophy  have 
made  articulate.  A  decadent  religion  will  not  respond  to 
these  stimuli,  but  a  vigorous  faith  will  meet  these  needs 
and  answer  these  demands  by  developing  its  doctrines  and 
connecting  them  in  a  systematic  way.  Primarily,  religious 
doctrines  are  designed  to  set  forth  the  values  of  religious 
experience ;  but  in  the  higher  stages  of  culture,  theology 
seeks  to  invest  religious  beliefs  with  a  degree  of  reasonable- 
ness. It  strives  to  become  a  system  whose  parts  cohere 
with  and  mutually  support  each  other.  From  the  nature 
of  the  case,  theology  cannot  be  philosophy ;  yet  in  its 
maturer  age,  when  science  and  philosophy  are  exercising 
an  influence  in  the  world  around  it,  theology  is  prompted 
to  enlarge  its  scope  and  to  broaden  out  in  the  direction  of 
a  religious  philosophy.  The  theologian  passes  beyond  the 
original  view  of  his  office,  which  was  to  report  faithfully 
the  working  conceptions  and  values  implied  in  a  given 
religion.  He  seeks  now  to  unfold  a  world-view,  based  on 
religious  postulates,  but  for  which  he  also  claims  ration- 
ality. The  motives  that  inspired  this  movement  are  not 
difficult  to  discern :  the  methods  of  explanation  used  in 
science  and  philosophy  could  not  be  altogether  ignored  by 
the  theologian.  Hence  we  find  theology  offering  explana- 
tions of  the  nature  of  God,  the  creation  and  development 
of  the  world,  and  the  origin  of  man.  Doctrines  bearing 
on  these  themes  have  entered  into  the  structure  of  Chris- 
tian Dogmatics,  and  have  been  embodied  in  the  creeds  of 
all  the  Christian  Churches.  When  we  consider  the  way 
in  which  theology  was  developed  on  these  lines,  we 
recognise  that,  in  intention  at  least,  it  occupies  a  mediat- 


PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION   AND   THEOLOGY         49 

ing  position  between  faith  on  the  one  hand  and  reason 
on  the  other.  Beginning  with  an  explication  of  faith- 
experiences,  it  ends  by  offering  what  purports  to  be  a 
rational  view  of  the  world.  In  this  latter  aspect  of  its 
development,  however,  Christian  theology  has  become 
entangled  in  controversy,  and  has  had  to  bear  the  brunt 
of  criticism.  Theology  has  failed  to  advance  with  scientific 
and  philosophical  culture,  and  in  consequence  its  doctrines 
on  the  nature  and  origin  of  the  world  and  man  have 
fallen  out  of  harmony  with  the  knowledge  of  the  age. 
Hence  the  so-called  conflict  between  Science  and  Eeligion, 
about  which  so  much  was  heard  in  the  middle  of  last 
century.  The  dispute,  when  closely  examined,  was  seen 
to  gather  round  doctrines  which  theology  had  pushed 
forward  under  the  shield  of  religious  authority,  but  which 
really  fell  within  the  province  of  science.  A  dispute  of 
the  kind  could  only  end  in  one  way,  theologians  have 
been  forced  to  resile  from  untenable  positions,  though  time 
has  shown  the  issues  at  stake  were  greatly  magnified. 

The  controversy  to  which  I  have  referred  draws  atten- 
tion to  a  difficulty  which  attends  an  endeavour  on  the  part 
of  theology  to  mediate  between  faith  and  reason.  The 
difficulty  arises  from  presuppositions  from  which  Christian 
theology  set  out  in  forming  its  doctrinal  system.  The 
Sacred  Writings,  it  assumed,  were  an  authoritative  basis, 
and  the  truths  which  could  be  gathered  from  them  were 
divinely  sanctioned,  and  provided  an  assured  ground  for 
inference.  The  appeal  in  this  instance  was  not  to  a  con- 
tinuous spiritual  experience  which  could  be  examined,  but 
to  statements  in  documents  of  very  different  dates  and 
character.  When  theology  therefore,  building  on  state- 
ments taken  as  authoritative,  proceeded  to  develop 
doctrines  for  which  the  claim  of  rationality  was  made,  the 
position  became  insecure.  The  scientist  refused  to  admit 
some  of  the  premises  from  which  the  theologian  set  out : 
the  latter  retorted  by  declaring  he  took  his  stand  on  truths 
divinely  revealed.  The  awkwardness  of  the  theologian's 
position  resulted  from  the  double  method  he  had  em- 
4 


50  INTRODUCTION 

ployed:  on  the  one  hand  claiming  rationality  for  his 
doctrines,  and  on  the  other  repelling  criticism  by  an 
appeal  to  authority.  He  laid  himself  open  to  the  objection, 
that  he  ought  to  employ  one  method  or  the  other,  for  it 
was  impossible  to  use  both  consistently.  And  it  must  be 
granted  that  many  of  the  difficulties  which  have  beset 
theology  in  modern  times  are  the  result  of  an  attempt  to 
fuse  together  methods  and  principles  which  will  not 
naturally  blend.  This  remark  applies  to  Protestant  as 
well  as  to  Eoman  Catholic  theology. 

If  theology  is  to  enter  into  some  kind  of  organic 
relation  with  a  Philosophy  of  Religion,  and  to  prove  a 
connecting  link  between  faith  and  reason,  the  principle  of 
authority  which  it  invokes  should  be  wider  and  more 
convincing  than  documentary  evidences.  In  the  end,  the 
ground  of  authority  must  be  the  character  of  the  spiritual 
experience  itself,  with  the  historic  values  which  have 
grown  out  of  it,  and  the  faith  which  is  its  living  expres- 
sion. The  degree  of  authority  which  attaches  to  Sacred 
Books  is  secondary  and  derivative:  it  depends  upon  the 
purity  and  fulness  of  the  spiritual  experience  they  embody 
and  the  worth  they  possess  for  the  religious  life.  The 
authority  of  Christian  theology  centres  in  the  intrinsic 
superiority  of  the  spiritual  values  which  it  sets  forth, — 
values  not  for  one  age  merely,  but  for  every  age. 

It  is  not  consistent  to  maintain  that  the  sole  sources 
for  authoritative  theological  doctrines  are  spiritual,  and 
yet  to  say  they  are  limited  to  certain  inspired  periods  and 
spiritual  movements  which  lie  in  the  distant  past.  And 
this  not  because  such  periods  do  not  possess  a  supreme 
value  for  the  religious  development  of  man,  but  because 
every  attempt  by  a  later  age  to  generalise  the  religious 
meaning  of  these  great  movements  must  be  influenced  by 
its  own  life  and  culture.  Thus  successive  epochs  of 
Christian  history  show  us  the  Christian  Church  of  the 
time  reading,  unconsciously  often  yet  none  the  less  really, 
its  own  temper  and  ideals  into  the  primitive  record  of  the 
origins  of  our  faith.  So  it  is  that  the  Present  steadily 


PHILOSOPHY   OF    RELIGION   AND   THEOLOGY         51 

contributes,  albeit  without  observation,  to  the  meaning 
and  value  of  the  Past.  Ignoring  this  truth,  theologians 
imagined  they  could  express  the  meaning  of  religion  in 
doctrinal  forms  which  would  be  valid  for  all  time,  and 
would  serve  from  generation  to  generation  as  the  authorita- 
tive embodiment  of  the  Church's  faith.  Still  fettered  by 
these  prejudices,  theology  in  modern  times  has  progressed 
with  difficulty,  and  the  modern  religious  consciousness  is 
finding  it  increasingly  hard  to  take  the  ecclesiastical 
creeds  for  the  expression  of  its  own  meaning  and  aspira- 
tions. The  Philosophy  of  Religion  has  thus  to  some  extent 
displaced  the  older  Dogmatics  in  the  regard  of  thoughtful 
people,  and  in  the  circumstances  the  relations  between  it 
and  ecclesiastical  Theology  are  somewhat  strained.  Nor  is 
it  likely  they  will  be  different  until  theology  renounces 
the  claim  to  finality  and  frankly  accepts  the  principle  of 
doctrinal  development. 

It  may  be  well  to  say  at  this  point,  that  philosophy 
need  have  no  quarrel  with  theology  because  the  latter 
accepts  postulates  of  faith  made  on  grounds  of  value. 
The  Christian  experience,  of  which  theology  is  the 
explication,  ultimately  rests  on  truths  which  are  held  on 
the  assurance  of  faith,  not  on  logical  demonstration.  No 
rational  deduction,  for  instance,  can  give  for  its  conclusion 
the  Christian  idea  of  God:  faith  makes  it  real,  not 
logical  proof.  In  view  of  the  stress  philosophy  lays  on 
the  principle  of  rationality,  it  might  seem  that  the 
presuppositions  of  theology  were  unfavourable  to  any 
close  relation  on  its  part  with  a  Philosophy  of  Religion. 
This  is  true,  no  doubt,  if  the  theologian  takes  faith  in  the 
narrow  sense  of  beliefs  held  upon  authority :  it  is  not  the 
case  if  he  sets  out  from  postulates  of  the  religious  life. 
Eaith,  conceived  as  postulates  or  demands  which  our  inner 
life  makes  on  the  world,  is  by  no  means  limited  in  its 
operation  to  religion.  It  pervades  practical  life,  and 
neither  science  nor  philosophy  can  dispense  with  it.  The 
process  of  rationalising  is  never  complete,  and  the  exercise 
of  reason  rests  in  the  last  resort  on  postulates  which 


52  INTRODUCTION 

cannot  be  rationally  deduced.  In  this  respect  the  differ- 
ence between  theology  and  religious  philosophy  is  one  of 
degree  only :  the  one  lays  greater  stress  on  faith,  the 
other  on  reason ;  but  reason  cannot  work  without  faith, 
and  faith  has  its  proper  ally  in  reason. 

The  conclusions  we  draw  may  now  be  briefly  stated. 
Theology  is  and  must  remain  the  exposition  of  the 
doctrines  of  a  definite  and  historic  religion.  The  principle 
of  authority  to  which  it  appeals  must  not  be  external,  but 
the  enduring  spiritual  experience  of  which  the  religion  is 
the  practical  and  institutional  expression.  That  experience, 
however,  ought  not  to  be  arbitrarily  limited  to  a  particular 
epoch  :  it  should  not  be  conceived  to  begin  at  one  point  in 
history  and  to  end  at  another.  In  other  words,  the 
theologian  must  take  his  stand  on  the  development  of 
religious  experience,  and  he  must  abandon  the  idea  that 
theological  doctrines  can  assume  a  stereotyped  and  final 
form.  This  is  only  to  give  its  due  scope  to  the  principle 
of  the  spirit  leading  the  spiritually  minded  into  fuller 
truth.  But  while  thus  enlarging  its  idea  of  experience, 
theology  ought  to  abstain  from  excursions  into  the 
domain  of  metaphysics.  It  will  not  be  denied  that  a  good 
deal  of  metaphysics  has  found  its  way  into  Christian 
theology,  and  some  of  it,  to  say  the  least,  is  of  questionable 
value.  The  objection  to  this  intrusion  is,  that  theology 
is  going  beyond  its  legitimate  sphere  in  developing  meta- 
physical theories,  for  they  stand  in  no  direct  and  vital 
relation  to  the  religious  experience  and  the  spiritual  values 
of  the  religious  life.  Authority  is  not  to  be  claimed  for 
them,  inasmuch  as  they  cannot  invoke  the  principle  which 
alone  would  invest  them  with  authority,  the  witness  of 
spiritual  experience.  This  is  far  from  saying  that 
religion  ought  not  to  be  brought  into  contact  with  meta- 
physics at  all ;  but  it  does  mean  that  theology  is  not  the 
proper  science  to  deal  with  the  metaphysical  issues 
involved.  Theology  may  be  well  content  to  leave  the 
speculative  problems  of  religion  unanswered,  and  to  hand 
them  over  for  solution,  if  a  solution  be  possible,  to  the 


PHILOSOPHY    OF   RELIGION   AND   THEOLOGY         53 

Philosophy  of  Eeligion.  The  latter  in  virtue  of  its  larger 
outlook  is  in  a  better  position  to  deal  with  them  ;  and  so 
the  religious  philosopher  conies  in  to  complete  the  work  of 
the  theologian.  The  latter  in  consequence  of  the  definitely 
limited  task  before  him  should  be  satisfied  to  allow  others 
to  handle  the  ultimate  metaphysical  problems  connected 
with  religion.  Yet  it  is  impossible  for  man,  rationally 
constituted  as  he  is,  to  set  these  problems  aside,  or  to 
acquiesce  in  treating  them  as  insoluble.  And  the  growing 
importance  of  the  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  in  the  present 
day  is  partly  due  to  the  knowledge  that  it  occupies  ground 
on  which  the  full  and  free  discussion  of  these  topics  of 
perennial  interest  may  properly  take  place. 

In  practice,  it  may  be  granted,  it  will  sometimes  be 
difficult  to  keep  theology  strictly  apart  from  a  Philosophy 
of  Eeligion.  For  they  deal  with  the  same  materials,  and 
the  exposition  of  the  meaning  of  a  theological  dogma  passes 
easily  into  a  philosophical  interpretation  of  it.  And  for 
the  theologian  who  has  no  antipathy  to  metaphysics,  the 
temptation  to  develop  a  speculative  theory  is  not  readily 
to  be  resisted.  Nor  will  any  harm  ensue,  provided  his 
speculations  are  put  forward  as  speculations,  not  as 
theological  doctrines.  What  must  be  deprecated  is  an 
unwitting  confusion  of  the  two  points  of  view.  Hence  it 
is  right  to  insist  that  any  speculative  treatment  of 
theological  doctrines  really  belongs  to  the  province  of 
religious  philosophy,  and  must  be  judged  as  such. 


PART  I. 

THE  NATURE  AND  DEVELOPMENT  OF 
RELIGION  (PHENOMENOLOGICAL). 

CHAPTER  I. 
THE  PSYCHICAL  BASIS  OF  RELIGION. 

A. — THE  PSYCHICAL  NATURE  OF  MAN. 

IF  asked  what  the  nature  of  religion  is,  the  ordinary  per- 
son might  have  little  difficulty  in  furnishing  an  answer. 
He  will  single  out  some  feature  which  strikes  him  as  char- 
acteristic of  piety ;  and  if  he  has  little  or  no  knowledge  of 
religions  other  than  his  own,  he  will  have  the  less  hesitation 
in  returning  a  reply.  To  one  who  has  some  acquaintance 
with  the  varied  phenomena  and  the  diverse  forms  of 
religion,  the  problem  does  not  seem  so  easily  solved.  He 
asks :  Where  does  religion  begin,  and  how  are  you  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  mere  superstition  ?  What  test  are  you  to 
apply  in  order  to  determine  the  presence  of  religion  ?  and 
is  it  possible  to  define  certain  points  which  are  common  to 
every  form  of  religion  ?  What,  for  instance,  is  the  common 
denominator  of  Buddhism  and  Roman  Catholicism,  or  of 
devil-worship  and  the  Religion  of  Humanity  ?  There 
seems  here  to  be  little  or  no  similarity,  whether  we  regard 
the  temper  of  the  worship  or  the  objects  worshipped.  In 
this  perplexity  he  will  probably  be  led  to  the  conclusion 
that  he  cannot  discover  any  hard  and  fast  test  which  can 
be  used  as  a  standard  of  what  is  religious  and  what  is  not. 
He  will  also  recognise  that  it  would  be  arbitrary  to  make 
his  own  feelings  and  judgment  the  criterion  in  this  matter. 

64 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  55 

With  the  best  will  in  the  world,  no  man  is  able  to  divest 
himself  entirely  of  prejudice  and  personal  bias.  But  what 
the  student  of  religion  may  fairly  do  is  this :  he  can  take 
the  religious  consciousness  of  the  society  in  which  he  lives 
and  which  he  shares,  and  he  can  properly  assume  that 
there  is  a  continuity  between  it  and  earlier  stages  of  re- 
ligious development.  For  continuity  is  involved  in  growth, 
and  if  there  were  no  continuity  discussion  would  be  futile : 
we  could  not  even  be  sure  we  meant  something  similar 
when  we  spoke  of  ancient  religion  and  the  religion  of 
to-day.  But  assuming  this,  and  setting  aside  the  question 
of  an  exact  definition  of  religion  in  the  meantime,  let  us 
consider  the  general  principles  which  are  at  work  in  bring- 
ing about  the  relation  which  is  broadly  termed  religious. 
There  is  no  better  way  of  coming  to  a  right  conception  of 
what  religion  means,  than  by  studying  the  principles  which 
generate  it  and  govern  its  evolution  from  the  past  to  the 
present.  Accepting  provisionally  some  such  minimum 
definition  of  religion  as  Tylor  has  given  in  his  Primitive 
Culture — "  a  belief  in  spiritual  beings  " — we  may  seek  by  an 
examination  of  the  phenomena  to  come  to  a  clear  idea  of 
what  is  essential  and  constitutive  in  the  religious  relation. 
A  verbal  definition  which  is  everywhere  and  always 
applicable  may  be  difficult,  and  it  is  not  indispensable. 
It  is  of  more  importance  to  understand  those  constant 
conditions  which  bring  religion  into  being. 

Taking  for  granted,  then,  that  there  is  a  continuity  in 
the  development  of  religion,  that  between  the  highest  and 
the  lowest  form  of  the  religious  consciousness  there  are  links 
of  connexion,  we  are  justified  in  inferring  that  the  key  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  process  is  to  be  found  in  the  spiritual 
nature  of  man.  For  religion  is  a  spiritual  process,  and  the 
secret  of  its  nature  and  growth  cannot  be  found  in  the  out- 
ward world  but  in  the  human  soul  itself.  At  the  outset  two 
questions  present  themselves  which  may  be  briefly  discussed. 
First  of  all,  What  is  the  origin  of  religion  ?  and  second, 
Does  religion  play  a  universal  part  in  human  experience  ? 

The  second  question  is  the  simpler,  and  we  take  it  first. 


56  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

Anthropologists  are  now  generally  agreed  that  religion,  in 
the  sense  of  a  belief  in  spirits  or  higher  powers  of  some 
kind,  is  a  universal  phenomenon.  No  race  has  been  shown 
to  be  entirely  without  some  such  belief.  Stories  of  low 
tribes  who  are  quite  destitute  of  religion  involve  mistake, 
misunderstanding,  or  the  application  of  too  high  a  test  of 
what  is  religious.  Writing  fully  half  a  century  ago,  Waitz 
put  the  case  clearly  and  justly  :  "  Superstitious  ceremonies 
which  point  distinctly  to  a  belief  in  supersensuous  powers 
nowhere  are  wanting."  l  And  in  more  recent  times  Eatzel 
returns  the  same  verdict :  "  Ethnography  knows  no  race 
devoid  of  religion,  but  only  differences  in  the  degree  in 
which  religious  ideas  are  developed."  2  Of  course,  if  any  one 
takes  the  religion  of  a  highly  civilised  race  for  his  standard, 
he  can  say  truly  enough  that  all  races  are  not  religious ; 
some  have  only  superstitions.  But  this  method  is  arbitrary, 
and  it  ignores  the  continuous  process  of  development 
between  the  highest  and  lowest  stages  of  culture.  In  the 
light  of  the  principle  of  development  we  can  discern  in  the 
rudest  social  groups  those  rudimentary  beliefs  and  practices 
which  are  the  beginnings  of  religion. 

The  first  question,  that  of  the  origin  of  religion,  is  of 
greater  importance.  It  is  possible,  however,  to  regard  it 
in  two  different  ways.  In  the  one  case  we  may  suppose 
the  task  set  to  us  is  to  fix  the  time  and  circumstances  in 
which  religion  first  came  into  existence.  When  and  where 
did  men  first  perform  acts  which  revealed  the  beginnings 
of  religious  belief  ?  This  is  a  problem  of  historical  origin, 
and  in  this  instance  we  neither  have,  nor  are  ever  likely  to 
have,  the  data  at  our  disposal  by  which  to  solve  it.  The 
few  thousand  years  of  which  there  is  any  historic  record 
are  only  an  insignificant  fragment  of  the  time  man  has 
lived  on  the  earth,  and  the  origins  of  the  race  are  shrouded 
in  obscurity.  We  cannot  lift  this  veil ;  at  the  most  the 
scanty  remains  from  the  older  and  later  Stone  Age  enable 

1  Anthropologie  der  Naturvb'lker,  vol.  i.  p.  323. 

2  History  of  Mankind,  vol.  i.  p.  40  ;  vid.  also  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture, 
vol.  i.  p.  417  ff. 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  57 

us  to  picture  in  rude  outline  the  long  and  arduous  struggle 
of  humanity,  ere  it  emerged  from  the  night  of  barbarism 
into  the  light  of  history.  At  what  point  in  this  age-long 
development  the  religious  spirit  began  to  stir  and  quicken 
man  to  action  it  would  be  futile  to  inquire,  and  of  no  great 
advantage  to  know.  In  all  probability  it  was  with  religion 
as  with  language  :  it  came  into  being  by  a  gradual  process  in 
which  the  transition  from  the  sub-religious  to  the  religious 
was  imperceptible.  We  may  be  content  to  leave  the  matter 
thus  :  and,  after  all,  the  issues  are  not  of  much  consequence. 
The  really  important  problem  in  connexion  with  the 
origin  of  religion  is  the  psychological  problem :  What  were 
the  motives  which  prompted  man  to  be  religious  ?  What 
were  the  feelings,  impulses,  and  ideas  which  conspired 
to  bring  about  in  man  the  state  of  mind  we  term 
religion  ?  We  are  here  dealing  with  a  workable  problem, 
because  there  are  data  which  help  us  to  answer  it.  There 
is  a  unity  in  human  nature  in  virtue  of  which  psychical 
processes  in  the  present  supply  a  key  to  those  in  the  past. 
In  his  intellective  functions  man  has  made  great  progress ; 
but  behind  the  intellectual  life  are  the  fundamental  feel- 
ings, instincts,  and  impulses  which  persist  through  all  the 
stages  of  development.  Though  transformed  they  are  not 
obliterated.  Man,  civilised  and  uncivilised,  as  Goethe  said, 

v/  is  moved  by  hunger  and  by  love.  It  is  from  the  study  of 
these  abiding  needs  and  desires,  interacting  as  they  do  with 
the  environment,  that  the  most  hopeful  prospect  opens  out 
to  us  of  understanding  the  way  in  which  religion  breaks 
into  life  and  growth.  The  problem  is  how,  assuming  the 
principles  of  the  psychical  life,  we  are  to  conceive  these 
principles  operating  in  primitive  man  and  impelling  him 
to  express  himself  in  religious  acts.  Certain  general 
influences  must  have  been  at  work,  influences  not  created 
by  particular  local  circumstances  and  conditions.  In  every 
form  of  religion  man  seeks  to  establish  a  helpful  relation- 
ship between  himself  and  higher  powers.  The  impulse  to 
form  this  relationship,  and  to  secure  satisfaction  through  it, 

\/  proceeded  from  a  felt  need ;  and  this  need  must  have  been 


58  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

latent  in  human  nature,  only  requiring  stimuli  from  the 
environment  to  quicken  it  to  utterance.  The  presence  of  a 
need,  however,  is  significant  of  an  incompleteness  in  the 
subject  which  experiences  it,  of  some  uneasiness  or  lack  of 
harmony  which  the  individual  strives  to  change  into  a 
state  of  satisfaction.  Were  man  a  being  spiritually  com- 
plete, or  were  he  doomed  to  remain  for  ever  unconscious  of 
his  own  defects,  then  in  neither  case  would  the  motives 
which  lead  to  religion  be  present.  He  would  not  strive  to 
link  himself  to  higher  powers,  for  he  would  not  need  them, 
or  he  would  not  be  conscious  of  his  need.  The  universality  ^ 
of  a  felt  need  is  the  secret  of  the  universality  of  religion. 
The  uniformity  with  which  religion  comes  to  birth  in 
human  experience  is  the  symptom  and  expression  of  the 
common  character  of  man  which  lies  behind  his  religion. 
Man's  religion  is  coloured  by  his  environment,  for  the 
environment  gives  shape  to  his  particular  wants ;  but 
despite  endless  variations  in  the  surroundings,  the  similari- 
ties which  pervade  early  religious  ideas  and  customs  are 
remarkable,  and  they  cannot  be  due  to  imitation  or  borrow- 
ing. In  the  case  of  social  groups  widely  separated  in  space 
and  time,  the  theory  of  borrowing  is  not  tenable.  The 
broad  likenesses  in  religious  beliefs  and  practices  have  their 
source  in  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  which  is  active  in  the 
production  of  religious  phenomena.  The  ways  in  which  he 
seeks  satisfaction  for  his  religious  needs  broadly  correspond, 
just  because  an  identical  psychical  constitution  determines 
these  needs.  In  truth  all  historic  phenomena  are  the  out- 
come of  human  wills  acting  and  reacting  on  one  another 
and  on  the  environment,  and  so  psychology  is  of  primary 
importance  in  the  study  of  human  development.  The 
psychological  method  is  the  method  by  which  we  keep  in 
touch  with  the  influences  that  go  to  the  making  of  the 
facts.  Those  who  work  on  this  plan  are  less  likely  to  offer 
vague  generalisations  for  explanations,  or  to  manipulate  the 
facts  to  suit  their  theories. 

If  we  take  the  psychical  nature  of  man  as  the  basis 
from  which  to    discuss    the    origin    and    development    of 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  59 

religion,  our  first  step  must  be  to  scrutinise  the  basis 
carefully.  How  much  is  implied  by  the  term  '  psychical 
nature/  and  what  is  to  be  excluded  as  non-psychical  ? 
The  question  is  more  important  than  appears  on  the 
surface,  for  the  answer  we  give  will  affect  our  psychological 
interpretation  of  religion.  At  first  sight  it  might  seem 
the  simple  and  obvious  thing  to  say,  that  our  psychical 
nature  is  just  the  various  mental  processes  of  which  we 
are  conscious  when  our  minds  are  at  work :  consciousness, 
in  other  words,  is  the  note  of  what  is  psychical.  But  it 
only  needs  a  slight  examination  to  show  that  our  conscious 
activity  is  not  a  self-contained  whole  with  sharply  defined 
boundaries.  For  it  is  closely  related  to  and  implies 
mental  processes  of  which  we  are  not  conscious.  The 
clear  region  of  consciousness  fades  gradually  into  a  dim 
and  sub-conscious  region  in  which  psychical  processes  exist, 
although  they  do  not  normally  rise  above  the  '  threshold  of 
consciousness.'  Consciousness  has  been  suggestively  com- 
pared to  the  field  of  vision,  vivid  and  distinct  at  the  focus 
but  becoming  blurred  towards  the  margin,  now  expanding 
and  now  contracting  its  range.  But  at  one  point  or 
another  the  illuminated  space  melts  into  the  obscure  tract 
of  the  subconscious,  though  the  point  of  transition  cannot 
be  definitely  marked.  To  the  latter  sphere  belong  the 
psychical  traces  and  dispositions  involved  in  the  function- 
ing of  memory,  and  in  the  performance  of  actions  which 
are  automatic  or  have  become  mechanised.  To  this  sphere 
likewise  belong  the  mental  processes  implied  in  the 
activity  of  the  instincts,  and  those  dim  feelings  which  are 
linked  with  the  performance  of  organic  functions.  We 
draw  steadily  on  our  subconscious  resources  in  the  use  of 
memory,  and  events  which  have  left  traces  in  the  sub- 
conscious region,  though  they  have  passed  out  of 
remembrance,  may  continue  to  affect  our  feeling-tone. 
Hence  psychical  processes  of  which  we  are  conscious  may 
be  stimulated  by  influences  coming  from  the  subliminal 
sphere.  A  continuous  interaction  goes  on  between  the  two 
spheres,  and  neither  is  intelligible  apart  from  the  other. 


60  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

Our  psychical  being  really  consists  of  the  totality  of  the 
conscious  and  subconscious  elements,  and  at  each  moment 
of  the  soul's  life  there  is  a  blending  of  more  or  less  conscious 
processes.  Already  certain  religious  phenomena,  notably 
mystical  experiences,  have  received  a  suggestive  inter- 
pretation on  the  hypothesis  of  subliminal  activity.  And 
the  general  question  arises,  whether  the  influences  which 
prompt  man  to  religion  do  not  proceed  from  the  subcon- 
sciousness.  Through  the  subliminal  door,  says  Professor 
James,  transmundane  energies  operate  within  our  ordinary 
world.1  A  follower  of  James  claims  that  the  '  feeling  mass  ' 
which  lies  beneath  the  play  of  conscious  processes  is  the 
source  of  a  racial  or  instinctive  wisdom.*  While  an  English 
psychologist  of  eminence  believes  that  instincts  are  "directly 
or  indirectly  the  prime  movers  of  all  human  activity."  8 

It  will  not,  I  think,  be  denied,  that  some  religious 
phenomena  have  light  thrown  on  them  by  connecting  them 
with  subconscious  processes.  And  it  may  also  be  granted 
that  influences  proceeding  from  man's  instinctive  life  have 
affected  his  religious  ideas.  Moreover,  subconscious  factors, 
in  the  form  of  dispositions,  slowly  accumulated  and  trans- 
mitted, help  us  to  understand  the  working  and  the 
continuity  of  the  religious  spirit.  But  what,  it  seems  to 
me,  is  unwarranted,  is  to  set  the  conscious  over  against  the 
unconscious  elements  in  the  human  soul,  and  to  make  the 
latter  the  ground  and  explanation  of  the  former.  I  refer 
to  the  method,  followed  by  von  Hartmann  and  others,  of 
treating  the  conscious  life  as  a  superficial  manifestation 
which  constantly  reflects  and  is  determined  by  the  play  of 
the  deeper  unconscious  processes.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
we  are  entitled  to  speak  of  the  unconscious  at  all :  there  is 
only  evidence  of  degrees  of  consciousness,  more  or  less. 
Now  consciousness,  which  is  the  more  complete  and 
developed  function,  gives  the  key  to  the  subconscious. 
Psychical  process  is  purposive  throughout,  not  mechanical ; 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  524. 

*  Psychology  of  Religious  Belief,  by  J.  B.  Pratt,  p.  23. 

» Social  Psychology,  by  W.  McDougall,  p.  44. 


THE    PSYCHICAL   NATURE    OF    MAN  61 

and  the  higher  aspect  of  the  soul's  life  is  the  end  or 
realised  form — Aristotle's  TO  rl  fy  elvat, — of  the  lower. 
Consequently  man  only  realises  his  nature  as  man  when  the 
subconscious  is  related  to  the  conscious  as  means  to  end, 
and  the  end  dominates  the  means.  Feelings  and  instincts 
are  not  blind  forces  rising  up  from  beneath  and  impelling 
man  in  fixed  and  inevitable  ways.  When  these  sub- 
conscious tendencies  come  into  consciousness,  they  are 
transformed  and  invested  with  new  meaning  and  value  by 
the  self  or  completed  mind.  For  instance,  apart  from  a 
conscious  mental  activity,  instinctive  feelings  could  never 
be  elevated  into  religious  motives  ;  and  we  find  evidence 
of  this  in  the  fact  that  the  animals  never  develop  an 
attitude  which  can  be  called  religious.  This  seems  to  show 
that  consciousness  is  constitutive  of  the  religious  relation. 
Eeligion,  once  developed,  may  leave  traces  which  work 
subconsciously,  but  active  mind  must  first  give  experience 
a  religious  meaning  ere  such  processes  can  have  any 
bearing  on  religion.  It  may  be  added  that  it  is  only  too 
easy  to  appeal  to  the  unconscious  in  order  to  explain 
religious  phenomena,  and  von  Hartmann  has  been  blamed 
for  following  this  simple  method  when  he  is  confronted 
with  what  is  obscure  and  difficult. 

I  go  on  to  make  some  general  observations  on  the 
psychical  nature  of  man  regarded  in  its  relation  to  the 
development  of  religion.  Psychical  processes  should  be 
studied  from  the  point  of  view  of  growth :  there  has  been 
a  psychical  development  of  the  race  just  as  there  is  of  the 
individual,  and  the  latter  helps  us  to  understand  the 
former.  The  simplest  type  of  action  is  impulsive  action 
directed  outwards.  Conative  activity,  which  is  the 
inherent  property  of  life,  is  the  primitive  and  persisting 
factor  out  of  which  the  higher  functions  are  slowly 
differentiated.  At  the  lower  stages  of  conative  life,  idea, 
feeling,  and  will  are  blended  in  one,  and  experience  may 
be  described  as  a  feeling-continuum  in  which  differences 
are  submerged.  Specific  reactions  at  first  are  purely 
instinctive,  though  purposive  in  the  sense  of  being  life- 


62  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS    OF   RELIGION 

conserving.  These  life-conserving  impulses  gradually  come 
to  be  qualified  by  an  obscure  psychic  element,  and  this  is 
the  dim  beginning  of  conscious  experience.  The  rudi- 
mentary idea  is  at  first  tied  to  the  corresponding  act,  and 
is  symptomatic,  not  determining.  It  is  a  crucial  point  in 
psychic  evolution  when  these  ideas  are  liberated  from 
bondage  to  the  specific  reaction,  and  function  as  free 
memory-images.  These  free  ideas  make  the  acquisition  of 
meaning  possible,  and  so  become  the  condition  of  learning 
by  experience.  For  a  meaning  is  implicitly  universal :  it 
always  extends  beyond  the  particular  instance.  The 
special  development  of  the  centres  of  association  and 
retention  in  the  human  brain  has  made  possible  for  man 
a  greatly  increased  use  of  memory,  and  memory  in  its  turn 
is  the  condition  of  a  complex  organisation  of  ideas.  Man's 
growing  capacity  to  generalise  and  abstract  has  been  the 
means  by  which  he  has  won  for  himself  a  psychical  life 
which  he  recognises  to  be  his  own :  through  the  use  of 
ideas  as  the  instruments  of  his  will  he  has  come  to  know 
himself  as  a  self-conscious  centre  of  experience  over 
against  his  environment,  and  to  distinguish  inner  from 
outer  experience.  The  reflex  and  instinctive  elements 
continue  to  function  in  the  lower  strata  of  his  psychical 
life,  but  the  old  tyranny  of  impulse  has  been  broken  by 
the  enhanced  power  of  mind.  By  the  exercise  of  thinking, 
man  emancipates  himself  from  bondage  to  the  immediate 
present :  he  looks  before  and  after,  he  deliberates  and  adapts 
means  to  ends.  Thus  he  attains  the  status  of  a  voluntary 
agent  and  a  morally  responsible  being.  These  are  the  broad 
stages  of  the  way  traversed  by  the  human  soul  in  its  up- 
ward struggle  from  blind  conation  to  self-conscious  freedom. 
The  process  of  development  here  sketched  in  barest 
outline  takes  place  in  the  individual,  and  we  may  assume 
that  the  general  stages  of  the  individual's  development 
were  originally  traversed  by  the  race.1  In  race-development 
it  is  important  to  remember — and  this  is  my  second  point 

1  Absolute  correspondence,  it  will  be  observed,  is  not  asserted,  but  only 
a  general  similarity. 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  63 

— that  the  individual  and  collective  factors  are  inseparably^ 
related,  and  the  problem  of  the  evolution  of  man's  psychical  | 
nature  cannot  be  solved  on  purely  individualistic  lines.  It 
is  a  law  of  the  universe  that  isolation  is  incompatible  with 
development:  progressive  evolution  never  takes  place 
except  where  there  is  an  interaction  of  elements.  It  is 
equally  true  of  the  lower  world  of  organisms  and  of  the 
higher  world  of  psychical  selves,  that  latent  capacities 
are  only  called  forth  by  the  process  of  interaction.  In 
the  case  of  man  it  is  the  fact  of  his  existence  as  a  member 
of  a  group  or  social  whole,  composed  of  beings  like  himself, 
which  is  the  indispensable  condition  of  his  psychical  growth. 
Aristotle  fully  recognised  that  man  was  a  iroKiTucov  %<*>ovt 
whose  proper  nature  was  only  realised  in  and  through 
society.  And  modern  social  science,  working  in  the  light 
of  the  principle  of  evolution,  has  clearly  perceived  and 
emphasised  the  principle.  The  isolated  individual,  we 
are  often  told,  is  a  pure  figment  of  abstraction,  and  apart 
from  the  influence  of  society  we  cannot  tell  what  he 
would  be.  Each  individual,  in  virtue  of  his  membership 
in  society,  enters  into  a  rich  mental  inheritance,  which 
he  appropriates  but  does  not  create,  and  what  he  receives 
in  this  way  goes  far  to  make  up  the  contents  of  his 
mind.  Think  how  much  we  owe  to  language,  custom, 
and  belief;  and  these  were  not  individual  inventions,  but 
the  product  of  ages  of  social  growth.  They  form  the 
continuous  and  ever-present  social  atmosphere  which  the 
individual  absorbs  naturally  and  inevitably,  just  as  he 
inhales  the  atmospheric  air.  From  this  influence  he 
cannot  escape  even  if  he  would :  it  is  around  him  in 
infancy  and  it  abides  with  him  to  the  last.  On  the  higher 
levels  of  spiritual  development,  man,  indeed,  attains  a 
certain  independence  of  his  psychical  environment.  He 
may  form  opinions  which  are  opposed  to  those  of  his 
social  group,  and  he  may  break  with  ways  of  acting  which 
have  become  traditional.  Yet  even  in  the  case  of  the 
highly  developed  personality,  the  things  held  in  common 
far  outweigh  those  where  there  is  difference.  And  it  is 


64  THE  PSYCHICAL  BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

of  consequence  to  remember  that,  when  we  trace  the 
evolution  of  society  backward  to  its  earlier  stages,  the 
dependence  of  the  psychical  units  on  one  another  becomes 
closer  and  their  similarity  more  transparent.  Indepen- 
dence of  mind,  originality,  readiness  of  fresh  initiative,  tend 
practically  to  disappear  when  we  approach  the  beginnings 
of  culture,  and  man's  psychical  life  seems  more  and  more 
to  fall  into  a  colourless  and  monotonous  uniformity.  The 
sway  of  custom  and  tradition  is  imperious,  and  it  is  an 
unheard-of  thing  that  an  individual  should  oppose  his 
own  beliefs  to  those  of  his  tribe.  A  man's  religious  beliefs, 
for  instance,  are  those  of  the  group  to  which  he  belongs, 
and  this  was  as  much  a  matter  of  course  as  that  he 
should  speak  the  same  language  as  his  fellows.  If  we 
distinguish  two  factors  in  mental  development,  a  constant 
and  a  variable,  then  it  is  the  constant  which  dominates 
early  culture.  The  variable  factor  comes  into  prominence 
at  the  highest  stages  of  evolution  when  the  mental  functions 
are  fully  differentiated.  But  behind  the  variable  factor  is 
the  constant,  consisting  of  the  permanent  instincts  and 
the  accumulated  psychological  dispositions  which  are  the 
outcome  of  race-experience.  In  primitive  society,  then, 
the  variable  factor  is  sacrificed  to  the  constant.  Or,  to 
put  it  otherwise,  the  lower  strata  of  the  soul-life,  the 
common  impulsive  and  instinctive  ground  which  is  the 
basis  from  which  development  proceeds,  is  predominant. 
The  very  narrowness  of  human  consciousness  at  this  early 
epoch,  and  the  absence  of  any  reflective  outlook  on  things, 
make  the  members  of  the  group  more  susceptible  to 
common  psychical  influences.  The  '  psychical  infection/ 
such  as  one  can  still  see  running  through  a  modern  crowd 
at  a  time  of  tense  feeling  or  elemental  passion,  must  have 
played  a  more  constant  part  in  the  beginnings  of  human 
culture.  Owing  to  the  lack  of  reflective  thought  it  had 
fuller  and  freer  scope.  In  virtue  of  these  influences  which 
permeated  the  social  body  and  were  experienced  by  all 
the  members,  some  writers  speak  of  a  '  group  spirit.'  At 
all  events  we  can  say,  that  the  psychical  traits  which 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  65 

marked  the  primitive  clan  or  tribe  were  reflected  with 
singular  regularity  in  each  of  the  individuals  who  com- 
posed it.  Hence  it  is  psychologically  intelligible  that 
the  earliest  forms  of  religious  activity  we  can  trace  reveal 
an  almost  total  want  of  anything  like  an  individual  attitude 
in  religion.  Everywhere  the  members  of  the  tribe  seem 
to  feel,  believe,  and  act  in  the  same  way  in  all  that 
concerns  religion. 

The  essential  dependence  of  man's  psychical  life  on 
his  membership  in  society  is  emphasised  by  the  phenomenon 
of  language.  Than  speech  there  has  been  no  more  im- 
portant instrument  of  human  development,  and  speech  is 
a  social  product  designed  to  serve  common  ends.  The 
need  for  communication  and  co-operation  lies  behind  the 
origin  of  language.  Stein  thai  has  suggested  that  the 
first  human  utterances  were  reflexive  cries  which  evoked 
a  sympathetic  response;  and  if  we  accept  the  evolution 
of  man  from  subhuman  forms,  there  must  have  been,  as 
H.  Paul  has  said,  a  long  period  of  confused  utterance  and 
the  most  varied  articulations.  The  psychical  capacity  of 
man  to  evolve  language  was  the  result  of  his  higher  cerebral 
development,  and  the  stimulating  factor  was  the  urgent 
need  of  communication  acting  on  a  capacity  for  imitation. 
The  problem  of  the  origin  of  language  is  a  purely  psycho- 
logical one,  and  it  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  it  here. 
The  point  to  keep  in  mind  is,  that  a  considerable  progress 
in  the  use  of  speech  must  have  taken  place  ere  the  existence 
of  religious  ideas  became  possible.  Terror  in  presence  of 
the  forces  of  nature,  such  as  we  see  in  animals,  may  exist 
apart  from  the  power  of  speech,  but  this  is  not  religion. 
We  can  only  speak  of  religion  where  there  is  the  idea  \ 
of  a  relation  to  higher  powers,  and  the  conception  of  such 
a  permanent  relation  is  made  possible  by  language.  It 
is  important  to  note,  that  there  goes  with  the  growth  of 
speech  a  way  of  regarding  the  world  which  led  naturally 
to  the  development  of  a  religious  relation.  Language 
expresses  thought,  and  all  thought  proceeds  in  the  form 
of  judgments.  In  judging  we  are  always  referring  an 
5 


66  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

idea  or  mental  conduct  to  something  beyond  itself.  The 
simplest  kind  of  judgment  is  an  exclamation  directed  to 
some  phenomenon  or  event  which  arrests  attention ;  and 
this  helps  us  to  understand  why  roots,  which  are  the 
most  primitive  stratum  of  language,  are  verbal  forms 
expressive  of  activity  and  movement.  A  psychological 
distinction  of  subject  and  predicate  is  necessary  from  the 
first, — the  cry  or  exclamation  to  have  meaning  implies 
this — but  with  the  growth  of  language  a  logical  differentia- 
tion of  subject  and  object  was  developed  on  the  basis  of 
the  psychological  distinction.  This  linguistic  development 
issued  from  and  gave  explicit  expression  to  a  principle 
involved  in  all  experience,  the  principle,  namely,  that 
experience  means  an  experient  subject  which  is  the  centre 
and  support  of  its  own  states.  Without  this  sustaining 
centre  of  reference  experience  would  disappear.  The  self 
as  the  ground  and  unity  of  its  own  states  is  the  type 
on  which  the  relation  of  subject  and  predicate  was  evolved. 
The  type  of  judgment  thus  formed  was  applied  instinctively 
by  man  to  the  objects  in  the  world  around  him,  and  things 
were  construed  as  substances  which  were  the  active  centres 
of  their  own  states  or  qualities.  So  human  judgments  were 
elaborated  on  an  animistic  basis.  Primitive  man  everywhere 
instinctively  projected  his  own  form  of  experience  into  his 
environment  and  interpreted  in  terms  of  his  own  life.  He 
involuntarily  peopled  the  world  with  a  multitude  of  beings 
akin  to  himself.  And  the  form  of  primitive  speech  gave 
natural  expression  to  the  animism  which  lay  behind  it. 

Early  man's  vocabulary  was  meagre  in  the  extreme, 
and  it  was  but  slowly  extended  by  the  use  of  analogy  and 
association.  Beyond  question  man,  in  his  .upward  struggle, 
made  a  decisive  gain  when  he  became  able  to  employ  the 
word  as  a  symbol  for  an  object,  in  order  to  bring  the  same 
object  before  the  mind  of  his  fellows.  Ere  man  had 
evolved  the  psychical  capacity  to  give  some  linguistic 
mark  to  the  object  he  perceived,  to  remember  it  by  means 
of  the  mark  and  to  communicate  to  others  the  way  in 
which  it  impressed  him,  we-  cannot  suppose  there  was 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  67 

religion  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term.  This  linguistic 
achievement  made  practicable  the  common  recognition  by  | 
the  members  of  a  tribe  that  a  constant  relation  existed 
between  them  and  powers  who  could  help  or  hurt  them. 
Mythical  thinking  had  now  an  instrument  with  which  to 
work,  and  the  religious  instinct  had  acquired  a  basis  on 
which  to  develop  itself. 

Let  us  try  to  represent  to  ourselves,  so  far  at  least  as 
we  can  do  so  by  the  help  of  inference  and  analogy,  the 
features  of  the  psychical  life  which  lies  behind  the  birth 
and  infancy  of  religion.  Though  reconstruction  of  the 
kind  is  hazardous,  we  are  not  altogether  left  in  the  dark 
in  trying  to  draw  an  outline.  Hints  to  guide  us  come 
from  two  different  quarters,  and  these  are  valuable  if  used 
with  caution  and  discrimination.  I  refer  to  the  help 
which  may  be  derived  from  the  study  of  the  child,  and  from 
the  habits  and  mental  qualities  of  savage  races  which  have 
survived  to  our  own  time.  The  evolution  of  the  child 
mind  has  acquired  its  relevancy  for  our  present  purpose 
from  the  biological  principle  that  the  ontogenetic  process 
repeats  the  phylogenetic.  In  other  words,  the  main  stages 
of  individual  growth  are  a  repetition  of  the  stages  which 
have  been  traversed  in  race  evolution.  The  development 
of  the  individual  compresses  into  a  brief  span  the  successive 
advances  made  by  the  species  during  its  long  evolution. 
In  the  case  of  mental  development,  if  we  do  not  use  the 
principle  as  a  rigid  rule,  but  as  a  suggestive  and  helpful 
analogy,  we  shall  find  it  valuable.  The  slight  sketch  we 
have  already  given  of  psychical  growth  from  mere  impulsive 
action  up  to  reflective  thought,  a  process  constantly 
mediated  by  contact  with  a  social  environment,  follows 
the  broad  features  which  are  presented  by  the  developing 
mind  of  the  child.  In  a  large  way  we  can  trace  a  similar 
psychic  development  from  the  savage  mind  up  to  the 
reflective  self-consciousness  of  the  highly  civilised  man. 
At  the  same  time  a  word  of  caution  is  needed.  It  will 
not  do  to  convert  a  useful  analogy  into  a  fixed  and  ready 
means  of  accurately  testing  what  was  possible  for  the 


68  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

primitive  mind  of  the  race  and  what  was  not.  For,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  psychic  environment  of  the  modern 
child  is  very  different  from  that  of  the  individual  in  the 
lowest  stages  of  culture :  the  mental  stimulus  and  support 
received  from  the  environment  is  far  higher  in  the  former 
case  than  in  the  latter.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
to  remember  that  it  is  only  by  an  admissible  figure  of 
speech  that  we  speak  of  primitive  men  as  children.  They 
resemble  children  in  many  ways,  it  is  true,  but,  strictly 
speaking,  we  cannot  say  they  are  children.  The  impulses 
and  interests  of  full-grown  men  and  women,  however  low 
the  level  of  culture  on  which  they  stand,  are  not  precisely 
identical  with  individuals  at  the  stage  of  childhood.  For 
instance,  the  whole  range  of  feelings  and  motives  which 
grow  out  of  the  developed  sexual  life  are  operative  in 
adults,  but  not  operative  in  the  very  young.  The  point  is 
not  without  importance,  for  ideas  and  images  derived  from 
the  life  of  sex  at  an  early  period  gave  a  colour  to  man's 
religious  conceptions.  Nevertheless,  handled  with  dis- 
crimination, the  materials  drawn  from  the  study  of  the 
mental  development  of  children  are  of  service  to  the 
anthropologist :  they  offer  profitable  suggestions  when,  as 
very  often  happens,  direct  evidence  is  wanting. 

Exactly  the  same  remark  applies  to  the  information 
gleaned  from  a  study  of  the  life  and  customs  of  recent  or 
contemporary  savage  tribes.  Undoubtedly  it  was  the 
knowledge  gathered  from  an  examination  of  existing  savage 
races  which  enabled  the  highly  civilised  peoples  to  recognise, 
in  their  own  customs  and  modes  of  thought,  the  traces 
which  indicated  that  their  ancestors  in  the  remote  past 
had  gone  through  the  same  phase  of  development.  The 
service  which  the  study  of  peoples  still  in  the  lower 
culture  has  rendered  in  opening  out  a  view  of  the  course 
of  human  evolution  is  very  great ;  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say,  that  our  present  conceptions  of  the  prehistoric  develop- 
ment of  man  could  not  have  been  formed  apart  from  the 
stimulus  and  suggestions  thus  received.  But  here,  too, 
care  is  necessary,  inasmuch  as  inquirers  have  sometimes 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  69 

rushed  to  the  conclusion  that  savage  races  of  the  present 
reveal  to  us  what  is  really  primitive.  This  is  an  assumption 
we  are  not  entitled  to  make.  Compared  with  our  advanced 
culture  they  do  show  us  what  is  relatively  primitive :  but 
to  say  they  take  us  back  to  what  existed  at  the  beginnings 
of  the  race  is  a  very  different  statement.  The  structure  of 
savage  custom  and  belief  changes  slowly,  but  still  it 
changes,  and  a  course  of  development  lies  behind  the 
rudest  societies  known  to  us.  In  some  cases,  owing  to 
isolation  and  unfavourable  external  conditions  of  life, 
savage  races  may  have  deteriorated  from  a  relatively 
higher  culture.  But  the  beginnings  of  the  race  belong 
to  a  period  so  remote  that  it  would  be  unwarrantable  to 
suppose  that  the  lowest  races  of  the  present  day — say  the 
Australian  aborigines — exhibit  to  us  primitive  conditions. 
It  has,  for  example,  been  inferred  that,  because  traces  of 
belief  in  a  great  god  are  found  among  tribes  in  Australia, 
Central  Africa,  and  elsewhere,  primitive  religion  must  have 
been  a  kind  of  monotheism,  from  which  spiritism  was  a 
degradation.  The  conclusion  is  vitiated  by  the  uncritical 
assumption  on  which  it  is  based. 

There  is  no  direct  evidence  of  what  was  really  primitive 
in  human  development.  The  psychical  qualities  of  the 
earliest  ancestors  of  the  race  must  remain  a  more  or  less 
plausible  reconstruction  from  inadequate  data.  But  using 
such  evidence  as  can  be  got  from  the  study  of  children 
and  savage  tribes,  we  can  draw  some  general  conclusions 
in  regard  to  the  psychical  life  of  which  the  early  phenomena 
of  religion  were  the  outcome.  The  impulsive  and  emotional  V 
activity  was  far  stronger  than  in  civilised  peoples,  and  life 
to  a  much  greater  degree  consisted  in  the  play  of  stimulus 
and  reaction.  Emotional  instability  was  very  marked : 
man  was  more  easily  prostrated  by  fear  or  shaken  by 
passion,  and  the  power  of  self-control  was  limited.  The 
phenomena  of  convulsion  and  ecstasy  are  common  in  the 
lower  culture,  and  man  has  little  or  no  capacity  of 
regulating  his  life  such  as  a  developed  mind  possesses. 
With  these  features  went  high  susceptibility  to  outward 


70  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

impressions  and  dependence  upon  the  environment :  when 
the  need  of  the  hour  was  relieved,  physical  and  mental 
effort  ceased,  and  fits  of  fierce  activity  were  followed  by 
times  of  sluggishness  and  torpor.  An  outstanding 
characteristic  of  primitive  man  was  weak  intellection: 
hence  his  inability  to  generalise,  to  relate  means  to  more 
distant  ends,  and  to  practise  restraint  in  the  present  for 
the  sake  of  the  future.  Gorged  with  food  one  day  and 
wasting  what  he  could  not  use,  a  day  or  two  later  he  might 
be  starving.  The  primitive  mind  was  constantly  governed 
by  the  immediate  interest,  and  selfishness  was  not  even 
tempered  by  prudence.  His  feebleness  of  thinking  power 
made  early  man  very  responsive  to  the  experiences  of  the 
moment,  and  belief  was  easy  because  the  mind  was  destitute 
of  ideas  by  which  to  inhibit  or  qualify  a  dominant  im- 
pression. It  is  well  known  that  a  belief  can  operate  on 
the  savage  mind  with  the  power  of  a  fixed  idea ;  the  belief, 
for  instance,  that  some  magic  spell  will  cause  sickness  or 
death  can  bring  about  the  result.  The  outward  life  which 
corresponded  to  this  low  mental  organisation  was  not  an 
idyllic  one,  we  may  be  sure :  it  was  a  constant  struggle  to 
satisfy  bodily  needs,  a  life  ruled  by  the  play  of  the  natural 
instincts  and  pervaded  by  sombre  fears  and  mean  desires. 

If  we  are  not  able  to  say  how  man  regarded  the  world 
when  he  was  emerging  from  purely  animal  conditions,  we 
can  at  least  form  a  general  idea  of  his  attitude  to  it  at 
the  stage  when  he  had  developed  language  into  a  service- 
able means  of  communication,  and  was  beginning  to  evolve 
religious  ideas.  It  was  on  the  basis  of  a  particular  way  of 
regarding  natural  objects  and  processes  that  religious  beliefs 
gradually  took  form.  Let  it  be  said  at  once  that  early 
man  had  no  deliberate  theory  of  things ;  and  to  talk  of  a 
'  primitive  philosophy '  is,  to  say  the  least,  very  misleading. 
The  germ  of  truth  in  the  statement  is,  that  savage  man 
did  put  an  interpretation  on  the  objects  around  him ;  but 
it  was  naive  and  almost  instinctive,  not  the  conscious 
solution  of  a  problem.  Even  the  animal  draws  a  dis- 
tinction between  its  body  apd  its  environment,  between 


THE   PSYCHICAL   NATURE   OF   MAN  71 

its  own  movement  and  the  movement  of  an  object,  and  it 
is  instinctively  aware  that  it  can  produce  effects  upon 
surrounding  things :  without  this  consciousness  it  could 
not  survive  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  It  was  ' 
characteristic  of  man,  however,  that  he  gave  a  meaning  to  \ 
his  world,  and  this  he  did  by  the  involuntary  projection 
of  his  experience  into  things.  Conscious  of  power,  will, 
activity  in  himself,  he  could  not  conceive  of  effects  in  the 
surrounding  world  save  as  brought  about  by  the  same 
principle.  Living  himself,  he  saw  living  beings  acting 
and  working  everywhere  around  him.  But  selective 
interest  would  set  certain  things  more  conspicuously 
before  him  as  endowed  with  functions  like  his  own.  The 
most  primitive  elements  of  language,  the  verbal  roots, 
suggest  that  man  was  first  attracted  by  objects  in  which 
movement  and  change  were  very  evident.  These  would 
naturally  force  themselves  on  his  attention.  The  rushing 
river  and  the  springing  fountain,  the  waving  tree  and  the 
howling  wind  were  all  beings  possessing  power  and 
manifesting  energy  like  his  own.  By  an  involuntary 
anthropomorphism  man  peopled  his  environment  with 
wills  like  that  which  he  recognised  in  himself : 

"Man,  once  descried,  imprints  for  ever 
His  presence  on  all  lifeless  things  :  the  winds 
Are  henceforth  voices,  wailing  or  a  shout, 
A  querulous  mutter  or  a  quick,  gay  laugh, 
Never  a  senseless  gust  now  man  is  born." 

This  impulse  of  primitive  man  to  treat  the  things  which 
impress  and  attract  him  in  terms  of  will,  it  is  usual,  after 
Professor  Tylor,  to  call  Animism.  The  reality  of  this 
tendency  can  easily  be  verified  from  the  beliefs  and 
customs  of  children  and  of  savage  tribes.  Eduard  Meyer, 
the  distinguished  historian  of  antiquity,  has  asserted  in 
the  anthropological  introduction  to  his  great  work,  that 
man  always  drew  a  distinction  between  animate  and 
inanimate  objects.1  It  is  easy  to  dogmatise  on  a  point 

1  Anthropologie,  1910 :  p.  88.  The  reasons  which  led  Meyer  to  this 
view  are  not  clear,  for  the  statement  is  made  very  much  ex  cathedrd. 


72  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS    OF    RELIGION 

like  this ;  and  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that,  while  early 
man  thought  the  moving  sun  and  cloud  were  alive,  he 
believed  the  ground  beneath  his  feet  was  dead.  Yet  does 
not  a  fallacy  lurk  in  the  supposition  that  distinctions 
which  have  become  part  of  the  mental  furniture  of 
civilised  men  must  have  somehow  existed  from  the  first  ? 
Surely  it  is  the  experience  of  life  and  activity  which  is 
primary :  the  idea  of  the  inanimate  is  secondary  and 
derivative,  and  is  reached  by  a  conscious  exclusion  of 
qualities.  Man  from  the  beginning  no  doubt  treated 
objects  we  regard  as  lifeless,  when  they  did  not  by  their 
qualities  or  manner  of  acting  obtrude  themselves  on  his 
notice,  much  in  the  way  that  we  do.  But  this  is  not 
tantamount  to  saying  that  he  consciously  put  them  in  a 
different  class  from  animated  things.  Consistency  in  his 
world-view  was  a  matter  which  gave  savage  man  no 
concern.  In  general  the  outer  world  of  primitive  man 
is  the  direct  reflexion  of  his  own  feebly  regulated  and 
incoherent  psychical  life.  The  conceptions  of  order  and 
law  do  not  exist ;  fortuitous  association  prevails,  and  any- 
thing may  be  the  cause  of  anything.  Selective  interest, 
governed  by  impressions  from  without  in  conjunction  with 
needs  from  within,  determines  what  objects  in  nature  man 
brings  into  closer  relations  with  himself.  If  we  term 
the  primitive  Weltanschauung,  with  Steinthal,  '  mythical 
thinking,'  then  mythical  thinking  is  essentially  loose  and 
arbitrary,  and  is  under  no  other  control  than  that  of 
immediate  interest.1 

B. — THE  PSYCHICAL  ELEMENTS  AND  THE  RELIGIOUS 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Up  to  this  point  we  have  been  dealing  with  man's 
psychical  nature  as  a  whole.  We  proceed  now  to  the 
analysis  of  the  elements  in  the  psychical  life,  in  order  to 
determine  more  closely  the  ways  in  which  they  respectively 
influence  the  religious  consciousness.  The  distinction  of 

1  This  term  is  also  used  by  Wundt  in  his  Vtilkerpsychologie. 


THE   PSYCHICAL   ELEMENTS  73 

psychological  elements  goes  back  to  the  Greek  thinkers  ; 
and  Plato,  it  will  be  remembered,  based  his  theory  of  the 
ideal  state  on  the  existence  of  "  parts  "  (etS??)  in  the  soul. 
Aristotle,  with  maturer  insight,  speaks  of  functions  or 
aspects  of  the  soul-life,  which  are  only  separable  in 
conceptual  thinking.1  The  outcome  of  the  Aristotelian 
psychology  was  the  broad  distinction  between  the  appetitive 
(TO  opeKTLKov)  and  the  rational  (TO  vorjriicov)  aspects  of  the 
soul,  or,  as  we  might  say,  between  the  conative  and 
intellective  functions.  The  threefold  division  into  feeling, 
thought,  and  will  was  first  proposed  by  Tetens  (1736— 
1807),  and  it  received  general  currency  through  the 
approval  of  Kant.  For  practical  purposes  this  analysis 
is  still  the  most  convenient,  though  from  the  genetic 
point  of  view  feeling  falls  nearer  to  conation  than  to 
intellection — a  fact  which  has  suggested  to  some  modern 
psychologists  the  propriety  of  retaining  a  twofold  division.2 
From  the  standpoint  of  religious  psychology,  however,  it 
is  not  essential  to  go  into  the  ultimate  question :  in  any 
case  the  psychical  life  which  man  brings  with  him  to  the 
development  of  religion  is  one  in  which  the  cognitive, 
volitional,  and  feeling  aspects  are  already  clearly  dis- 
tinguishable. With  the  development  of  mind,  with  its 
growing  consciousness  of  itself  as  an  independent  spiritual 
centre,  its  internal  differentiation  becomes  increasingly 
explicit.  And  it  is  intelligible  that  the  older  psychologists 
who  studied  the  developed  mind  apart  from  its  process  of 
growth,  were  led  to  the  theory  of  separate  faculties.  At 
the  present  day  the  old  '  faculty '  psychology  has  fallen 
into  ill  repute,  and  not  without  reason.  It  was  an 
illustration  of  the  tyranny  of  words,  of  the  delusion  that 
you  somehow  explain  a  thing  by  giving  it  a  name.  To 
say,  for  instance,  that  our  acts  of  volition  proceed  from  a 
faculty  of  will,  is  only  to  hypostatise  an  abstraction.  Whafc 

1  Cp.  Eth.  Nic.  i.  1102,  A.  28. 

2  Professor  Stout,  for  example,  iii  his  Groundwork  of  Psychology,  places 
conation  and  feeling  together  under  the  head  of  Interest  as  contrasted  with 
Cognition,  which  divides  into  Simple  Apprehension  and  Judgment. 


74  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS    OF    RELIGION 

we  experience  and  know  are  concrete  acts  of  willing :  the 
faculty  of  willing  is  only  a  mental  fiction.  The  soul  is 
certainly  not  divisible  into  compartments,  and  while 
mental  aspects  are  distinguishable  in  thought,  they  are 
not  divided  in  the  nature  of  things.  In  every  psychical 
process  all  the  elements  are  involved,  though  the  degree 
in  which  they  are  severally  present  may  be  very  different. 
In  sudden  and  overpowering  emotion,  feeling  iji  dominant 
and  intellection  is  faint,  while  in  solving  an  abstract 
problem  intellection  is  prominent  and  the  feeling-element 
is  feeble.  Even  in  the  so-called  passive  enjoyment  of  a 
beautiful  scene  there  goes  with  feeling  some  degree  of 
attention  and  interest,  and  this  signifies  the  existence  of 
will.  A  perfectly  pure  psychical  experience  in  which  only 
the  one  element  is  present  never  occurs  :  in  every  subjective  * 
process  the  structure  of  the  mind  as  a  whole  is  involved, . 
and  analysis  will  easily  show  this.  And  the  fact  has  an 
important  bearing  on  a  theory  of  the  psychical  origin  of 
religion. 

When  we  examine  some  of  the  theories  put  forward  to 
explain  the  psychical  origin  of  religion,  we  are  struck  by 
the  defective  psychological  analysis  on  which  they  proceed. 
Many  of  them  ignore  the  fundamental  unity  of  the  human 
mind,  and  suppose  one  element  may  function  apart  from 
the  whole.  For  instance,  religion  has  been  traced  to  a 
special  religious  organ :  its  existence  is  said  to  be  explained 
by  a  specific  religious  sentiment.  For  this,  it  need  hardly 
be  said,  the  modern  psychologist  can  find  no  evidence 
whatever ;  and  we  have  here  another  illustration  of  the 
old  and  faulty  method  which  explained  a  special  form  of 
activity  by  inventing  a  special  faculty  for  its  basis.  More 
plausible,  though  not  more  successful,  have  been  the  at- 
tempts to  trace  the  origin  of  religion  to  one  of  the  psychical 
functions,  to  feeling,  to  will,  or  to  thinking.  Feeling,  and 
more  particularly /ear,  has  frequently  been  regarded  as  the 
impelling  force  which  drives  man  to  religion,  his  defence 
against  impending  ills.  According  to  the  oft-quoted  line 
of  Petronius,  primus  in  orle  fecit  dcos  timor ;  and  this  has 


THE   PSYCHICAL    ELEMENTS  75 

been  a  favourite  idea  of  those  who,  like  Lucretius,  identified 
religion  with    superstition.     Fears    visibly  drove    men  to 
religious    rites :     smitten    with     terror    they    turned    in-    x 
stinctively  to  the  gods  for  help : — 

"  Non  populi  gentesque  tremunt  ?  regesque  superbi 
Corripiunt  divom  perculsi  membra  timore." 

In  modern  times,  Hume  has  laid  stress  on  fear  as  the 
motive  to  religious  acts,  though  he  was  too  acute  to  over- 
look the  fact  that  fear  could  not  operate  alone.  That  in 
fear  we  have  a  vera  causa  is  not  in  question.  A  vague 
terror  of  spirits  and  ghosts  of  the  dead  pervades  the  lower 
culture,  and  the  savage  often  dreads  to  stir  abroad  in  the 
dark.  One  can  still  observe  this  haunting  dread  of  evil 
powers  among  the  native  tribes  of  South  America, 
Australia,  and  West  Africa.  This  fear  may  sometimes 
dominate  the  cultus,  as  among  the  devil-worshippers  of 
India.  But  although  fear  is  a  cause,  it  is  certainly  not 
the  sufficient  reason  of  religion.  Reflexion  will  show  that  i 
it  is  not  psychologically  intelligible  that  the  motive  of  fear 
should  work  in  abstraction  from  other  motives ;  it  must 
be  connected  with  elements  derived  from  the  active  or 
conative  side  of  consciousness.  Man  is  afraid  of  the  loss 
of  some  good,  it  may  be  life,  health,  or  property  :  he  would 
not  fear  unless  he  had  hopes  and  wishes  whose  fulfilment 
he  desires.  Eeligion  implies  the  positive  attitude  as  well 
as  the  negative,  and  man's  fears  are  inexplicable  if  we  do 
not  remember  there  are  goods  on  which  his  heart  is  set. 
Feeling,  then,  in  the  form  of  the  emotion  of  fear,  is  only 
a  partial  explanation  of  religion.  A  somewhat  similar 
criticism  must  be  passed  on  Schleiermacher's  view,  that 
religion  arises  out  of  a  feeling  of  absolute  dependence.  For 
conscious  dependence  cannot  be  a  purely  negative  attitude : 
it  must  be  sustained  by  an  interest,  and  this  implies  the 
presence  of  a  volitional  element.  Moreover,  the  feeling  of 
dependence,  however  essential  to  religion,  would  not  by  itself 
constitute  a  religious  attitude  any  more  than  a  feeling  of 
bodily  comfort  would  do  so.  To  become  religious,  feeling 


V 


76  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

must  be  qualified  by  a  cognitive  element,  a  belief  in  a  power 
or  powers  on  whom  the  individual  depends,  and  between 
whom  and  himself  a  positive  relation  subsists.  Schleier- 
macher  confused  a  condition  with  an  adequate  explanation. 
The  attempts  which  have  been  made  to  derive  religion 
from  the  conative  side  of  consciousness  are  not,  I  think, 
more  successful.  They  set  out  from  an  important  truth, 
but  fail  to  recognise  that  this  principle  must  be  supple- 
mented if  it  is  to  work  in  the  way  supposed.  Kitschl, 
for  instance,  conceived  religion  to  come  into  being  in  order 
to  solve  the  contradiction  between  man's  impulse  to  main- 
tain his  independence  and  his  sense  of  limitation  as  a  part 
of  nature.  This  theory  has  been  reproduced  by  A.  Sabatier 
with  greater  attention  to  psychological  conditions.  Man 
in  his  psychical  life,  he  says,  brings  to  a  higher  level  the 
self-conserving  impulse  immanent  in  all  life.  Hampered 
by  the  limitations  of  his  environment  in  his  struggle  for 
goods,  he  experiences  distress  and  suffering  of  spirit.  Out 
of  this  entanglement  and  strife,  by  a  kind  of  salto  mortale 
he  finds  deliverance  and  preservation  in  religious  faith.1 
This  theory  comes  nearer  to  the  truth ;  for  it  recognises  a 
condition  of  religion  not  only  in  purposive  striving,  but  in 
the  feeling-element  represented  by  the  sense  of  distress 
and  need.  And  we  know  that  the  connexion  of  feeling 
and  will  is  more  conspicuous  in  the  lower  stages  of 
psychical  development  than  in  the  higher.  But  Sabatier's 
conception  is  defective  because  he  does  not  take  into 
account  the  presence  of  a  cognitive  element,  which  is 
represented  in  the  belief  that  powers  exist  who  can  help 
man  in  his  need.  By  laying  the  stress  on  the  self- 
conserving  impulse  he  tends  to  derive  religion  from  purely 
egoistic  desires.  But  even  in  primitive  religion  we  see 
the  self-conserving  impulse  tempered  by  a  further  motive, 
the  desire  for  communion  with  the  god.  In  the  lower 
nature-religions  there  seems  to  exist  a  sense  of  sympathy 
and  attraction  between  man  and  the  objects  of  his  worship, 
which  is  not  purely  selfish. 

1  Esquisse  d'une  Philosophit  de  la  Religion,  p.  14  ff. 


THE   PSYCHICAL    ELEMENTS  77 

It  is  not  necessary  to  say  much  about  the  endeavours 
to  explain  the  rise  of  religion  from  intellectual  motives. 
Curiosity,  the  desire  to  find  a  cause  of  things,  is  not  per  se 
a  religious  motive,  and  those  who  seek  to  derive  religion 
from   it  fail  to  explain  why  religion  is  so  clearly  differ- 
entiated from  science.     Moreover,  in  the  earliest  culture, 
reflexion  hardly  existed  :  man's  primary  concern  was  to  live, 
not  to  know,  or  at  least  to  know  only  as  it  helped  him  to ' 
live.     Primeval  man's  interest  in  causes  was  the  outcome  J 
of  his  interest  in  goods,  and  his  dominant  desire  was  to  i 
find  satisfaction  for  pressing  needs. 

Reviewing  the  evidence,  we  shall  have  no  difficulty,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  in  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  man's 
whole  psychical  constitution  is  involved  in  his  movement 
to  religion.  The  desire  for  goods  belongs  to  man's  nature 
as  an  active  being :  and  the  existence  of  desire  is  insepar- 
ably linked  with  the  sense  of  need  and  incompleteness, 
and  with  the  feeling-tone  which  goes  along  with  them. 
But  neither  the  desire  nor  the  feeling  could  in  itself  create 
the  object  through  relation  to  which  man  finds  religious 
satisfaction.  This  is  given  by  belief;  and  even  belief 
which  is  little  more  than  an  instinctive  idea  requires  some 
cognitive  activity  which  selects  and  holds  the  object  before 
the  mind.  And  without  the  superior  intellection  that 
distinguished  man  from  the  animals  and  made  the  growth 
of  language  possible,  it  is  safe  to  say  religion  would  not 
have  come  into  being.1 

But  while  it  is  necessary  to  hold  fast  to  the  truth  that 
no  one  psychical  element  can  account  for  the  origin  of  the 
religious  consciousness,  we  may  freely  admit  that  the 

1  As  Eucken's  philosophy  has  lately  attracted  a  good  deal  of  interest,  it 
may  be  well  to  point  out  that  his  discussion  of  the  "Psychical  Basis  of 
Religion  "  (Hauptprobleine  der  Religionsphilosophie)  is  not  psychological  in  the 
ordinary  sense  at  all.  He  dispenses  with  an  examination  of  the  psychical 
facts,  and  announces  it  is  necessary  to  go  beyond  the  division  into  psychical 
elements  to  an  inclusive  unity — the  "independent  life  of  the  Spirit"  which 
builds  up  a  new  personality  and  constitutes  religion.  The  objection  to  this 
method  is,  that  it  brings  in  a  normative  principle  without  any  study  of  the 
working  of  religion,  and  sacrifices  psychology  to  speculative  philosophy. 


78  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

different  elements  were  not  present  in  the  same  degree  of 
intensity.     The   impulsive   and   feeling    factors   are   more 
active  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  individual  and  of  the 
race,  and  thought  is  the  mere  servant  of  the  immediate 
purpose.     Anything  like  dispassionate  reflexion  is  remote' 
from  primitive  conditions.     It  was  therefore  especially  the\  >J 
feeling  and   conative   life   of  early  man  that  determined** 
the  motives  which  led   him  to  form  religious  ideas  and:v 
customs.     Behind  the  rise  of  religion  is  the  fundamental 
fact  that  man  is  an  incomplete  being,  and  his  incomplete- 
ness  is  revealed   in   the  constant   upspringing  of  desires 
which  call  for  satisfaction.     Were  human  needs  somehow 
satisfied    as    they  arose,  and  were    the    human    soul    not 
doomed   to   oscillate   between  hope  and  fear,  expectation  si 
and  disappointment,  man  would  not  be  impelled  to   seek 
help  and  comfort  in  union  with  higher  beings.     It  is  true 
of  the  savage  and  of  the  civilised  man,  that  the  more  full 
and  satisfying  he  finds  this  earthly  life,  the  less  will  he    $ 
experience  that  yearning  for  something  beyond  out  of  which 
religion  issues.     This  seems  to  be  the  measure  of  truth 
in  the  theory  which  is  sometimes  ^faultily  put  in  the  state- 
ment, that  religion  arises  from  man's  '  sense  of  the  infinite ' 
within  him.     We  can  at  least  say  that  man's  consciousness 
of  his  insufficiency  creates  that  longing  for  fellowship  with  - 
a  Reality  beyond  him  through  which  religion  is  realised:  . 
A  common  weakness  made  the  scattered  sections  of  the 
race  everywhere  religious  after  some  fashion  of  their  own : 
7rai/T69  Be  dewv  xareova'  avOptoirot,.1     In  maintaining  right 
relations  with  its  gods,  each  group  or  people  seemed  to 
possess  a  security  for   its  well-being  which  it  could  not 
gain   by  its   own  unaided  powers.     The  persistency  with 
which  man  turns  for  aid  to  invisible  beings,  and  that  despite 
many  rebuffs  and  disappointments,  is  a  token  of  the  en- 
during need  which  urges  him  on  this  quest. 

The  presence  of  all  the  psychical  factors  in  religious 
experience  has  been  sufficiently  insisted  on,  and  we  turn 
now  to  consider  briefly  the  specific  contribution  which  each 

*  Odyssey*™- & 


THE    PSYCHICAL    ELEMENTS  79 

makes  to  the  religious  consciousness.  To  the  working  of 
the  religious  relation  each  psychical  factor  contributes 
something  of  its  own  which  cannot  be  contributed  by  the 
other  factors.  I  begin  with  feeling. 

The  range  of  feeling  is  much  narrower  in  early 
religion  than  at  later  stages  :  it  is  chiefly  confined  to  impul- 
sive emotional  reactions,  to  manifestations  of  fear,  awe,  and 
joy.  But  as  man  wins  independence  and  inwardness  of 
spirit,  feeling  becomes  charged  with  larger  significance. 
In  feeling,  what  is  deepest  and  most  individual  in  religion 
is  expressed,  and  it  lies  nearest  the  centre  of  the  religious 
consciousness.  Suffused  by  the  magical  atmosphere  of 
pious  feelings,  deeds  and  things  not  in  themselves  religious 
take  on  a  religious  value :  and  apart  from  this  atmosphere, 
acts  of  worship  sink  to  the  level  of  the  mechanical  and 
commonplace.  That  intimacy  of  fellowship  with  the 
Divine  Object,  so  dear  to  the  religious  heart,  is  made 
possible  by  the  play  of  feeling,  and  feeling  makes  a  man's 
religion  personal  and  vital.  One  does  not  wonder  that 
Schleiermacher  was  led  to  the  exaggerated  statement  that 
"  all  absolute  feeling  is  religious."  We  can  see,  however, 
that  feeling  depends  for  its  intensity  and  distinctness  upon 
dispositions  of  the  will ;  and  apart  from  the  purposive 
life,  it  would  lose  its  practical  value.  Feeling  draws  the 
definiteness  of  its  appeal  from  its  connexion  with  desires. 
It  is  only  through  its  relation  to  the  ends  which  the  will 
seeks  to  realise,  that  feeling  can  be  described  as  good  or 
bad ;  and  it  is  only  through  relation  to  ideas  that  it  can 
acquire  clearness  of  meaning,  and  be  termed  true  or  false. 
Hence,  however  central  and  essential  feeling  may  be  in 
religion,  it  depends  for  its  religious  significance  on  its 
relations  to  the  other  elements,  and  it  grows  in  purity  and 
range  as  an  element  in  the  concrete  development  of  the 
spirit.  Higher  spiritual  feelings  are  rendered  possible  by 
the  growth  of  the  spiritual  personality  as  a  whole. 

With  the  activity  of  the  will  the  presence  of  values 
in  human  life  is  intimately  connected  :  the  desire  for  goods, 
which  plays  an  important  part  in  leading  man  to  religion, 


80  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS    OF    RELIGION 

is  an  expression  of  the  volitional  side  of  his  nature.  The 
active  and  the  purposive  life  of  man  is  reflected  at  every 
stage  of  his  religious  growth,  and  lends  character  to  the 
religious  consciousness.  The  fleeting  impulses  and  the 
vague  yearnings  of  the  primitive  period  are  gradually 
transformed  into  conscious  desires  wider  in  their  range 
and  more  enduring  in  their  nature,  and  they  are  finally 
developed  into  ideals  and  aspirations  which  express  the 
character  as  a  whole.  The  will  it  is  which,  by  its  exer- 
cise, forms  permanent  religious  dispositions  and  tendencies, 
and  so  gives  reality  and  continuity  to  the  religious  life. 
Feeling  is  apt  to  be  spasmodic:  it  fluctuates  and  varies 
in  intensity,  and  one  mood  rapidly  gives  place  to  another. 
The  heart  or  inner  disposition  is  relatively  constant,  form- 
ing the  permanent  background  of  character,  and  it  is 
gradually  fashioned  by  the  activity  of  the  will.  Thus 
through  the  energy  of  the  practical  self  a  constant  re- 
ligious disposition  is  built  up,  which  gives  a  centre  of 
support  and  so  a  more  stable  quality  to  the  religious 
emotions.  At  the  same  time,  and  in  the  same  way,  ^ 
religious  ideas  and  beliefs  are  invested  with  steadiness  and 
reality.  A  belief  to  persist  must  be  suffused  with  interest ; 
it  must  be  taken  up  into,  and  play  a  part  in  the 
structure  of  the  purposive  and  personal  life.  In  the  early 
stages  of  religious  evolution,  when  the  theoretical  spirit 
hardly  exists,  a  belief  must  be  acted  out,  and  so  become  a 
working  value,  or  it  will  fade  away.  Even  in  the  most 
developed  religions,  ideas  which  are  only  remotely  con- 
nected with  the  facts  of  the  spiritual  life  are  notoriously 
feeble  and  ineffective.  Through  our  wills  we  actualise 
our  beliefs,  and  make  them  a  part  of  ourselves.  Religious 
ideas,  again,  are  a  means  of  actuating  the  will :  they  give 
direction  and  meaning  to  feeling,  and  it  is  through  ideas 
that  man  has  slowly  raised  himself  to  the  vision  of  re- 
ligion as  life,  and  the  religious  life  as  a  reasonable  service. 
If  intellection  is  not  so  near  the  centre  of  religious  ex- 
perience as  feeling,  it  is  nevertheless  the  most  important 
factor  in  religious  progress.  Ideas  are  the  instruments 


J 


THE   PSYCHICAL   ELEMENTS  81 

whereby  man  generalises  his  experience,  and  renders 
religion  the  common  possession  of  the  tribe  or  people. 
Thought  first  encircles  religion  with  myth  and  legend  ; 
afterwards,  exercised  on  religious  experience,  it  translates 
it  into  doctrines,  which  become  a  traditional  inheritance 
and  can  be  taught.  The  stimulus  to  the  criticism,  modi- 
fication and  development  of  a  religious  system,  is  more 
particularly  due  to  the  intellectual  factor,  which  is 
susceptible  to  influences  from  the  environment.  The 
pressure  of  thought,  demanding  that  a  religious  system  be 
internally  coherent,  and  also  consistent  with  secular  know- 
ledge, is  able  to  overcome  the  conservative  tendencies 
fostered  by  feeling  and  habit.  *  Developed  thinking,  stimu- 
lated by  ideas  drawn  from  science  and  philosophy,  urges 
to  religious  progress  :  the  fixity  and  the  sameness  of  primi- 
tive religions  are  largely  due  to  weakness  of  thought.  In  the 
realm  of  thought  men  co-operate  freely,  man  sharpening 
the  countenance  of  his  friend.  Only  through  the  com- 
bined toil  of  many  generations  of  minds  have  religious 
ideas  been  delivered  from  their  ancient  vagueness  and 
rudeness.  Thought  has  gradually  liberated  religion  from 
its  native  narrowness,  and  enabled  it  to  exercise  an  en- 
lightened and  universal  appeal. 

The  different  psychical  elements  are  seldom  or  never 
present  in  ah  equal  degree,  either  in  individuals  or  in 
society  as  a  whole.  The  excess  of  one  element  over  the 
others  engenders  a  definite  and  easily  recognisable  type  of 
religion.  When  the  feeling  element  prevails,  piety  is 
termed  emotional  or  mystical  ;  when  thought  predominates, 
piety  is  termed  intellectual  ;  and  where  will  takes  the  lead, 
it  is  called  practical.  And  the  types  of  religion  we  see 
in  individuals,  we  can  also  discern,  broadly  reflected,  in 
the  religious  temper  and  life  of  an  age.  The  fact,  however, 
that  man  seeks  a  full  satisfaction  and  the  completion  of 
his  life  through  his  religion,  precludes  him  from  attaining 
his  goal  in  any  single  and  pronounced  type  of  spiritual 
experience.  An  inner  harmony  of  all  the  spiritual  powers 
cannot  be  achieved  in  this  way.  The  need  for  this 
6 


82  THE  PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

harmony  is  revealed  in  the  process  by  which  man  ever 
and  again  modifies  his  religious  beliefs  and  practices  in 
order  that  they  may  yield  him  a  fuller  satisfaction.  Re- 
ligious  feelings  which  knowledge  cannot  sanction,  practices 
which  are  mechanical  merely,  and  ideas  which  are  devoid 
of  sentiment  or  practical  value,  all  sooner  or  later  provoke 
a  reaction  which  issues  in  some  development  or  readjust- 
ment. The  ideal  would  be  a  relation  to  the  religious 
object  on  the  part  of  the  subject  which  would  harmonise 
and  finally  satisfy  his  whole  nature.  To  some  such  goal 
the  religious  spirit  in  man  seems  to  strive,  despite  many 
failures  and  disappointments. 

C. — THE  RELIGIOUS  RELATION:  ITS  SUBJECTIVE 
AND  OBJECTIVE  ASPECTS. 

Our  examination  of  the  psychical  elements,  and  the 
manner  in  which  they  function  in  religious  experience, 
has  now  to  be  supplemented  in  another  direction.  In  and 
with  the  working  of  the  religious  spirit  there  is  always 
implied  a  reference  to  an  object  other  than  the  subject ; 
and  the  idea  of  a  religious  experience  which  is  felt  to  be 
purely  subjective  is  contradictory.  Religion  can  only  be 
stated  in  terms  of  a  relationship,  and  any  human  experi- 
ence which  annuls  all  relation  eo  ipso  ceases  to  be  a 
religious  experience.  This  truth  is  recognised  in  the 
descriptions  of  religion  as  a  bond  or  a  communion,  for 
connexion  logically  presupposes  the  existence  of  difference, 
or  terms  brought  into  relation.  Most  clearly  does  this 
appear  in  the  central  act  of  religion,  in  worship.  For 
worship  means  the  going  forth  of  the  spirit  to  a  Reality 
beyond  itself,  in  order  to  realise  a  good  which  it  cannot 
find  within  itself.  The  worshipper  certainly  believes  in 
this  Reality,  and  if  he  did  not  believe  he  could  not 
worship.  A  pronounced  pantheism  which  denies  the 
possibility  of  this  reference  of  the  self  to  a  Reality  above 
it,  necessarily  reduces  the  religious  consciousness  to  an 
illusion. 


THE    RELIGIOUS    RELATION  83 

At  the  present  stage,  when  we  are  dealing  simply 
with  the  psychological  question,  we  are  not  called  upon 
to  discuss  the  nature  of  this  Eeality  nor  the  validity  of 
the  act  which  posits  it.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  the 
religious  spirit  in  its  psychological  working  postulates  a 
real  object,  and  just  now  we  have  only  to  consider  the 
psychological  character  of  the  relationship.  How  does 
the  religious  mind  feel  and  regard  itself  in  this  relation- 
ship which  it  deems  to  be  essential  to  its  own  spiritual 
life  ?  The  religious  consciousness  accepts  and  affirms  the 
existence  of  the  object  to  which  it  relates  itself,  and  it 
does  so  by  an  act  of  belief.  In  belief  there  is  a  cognitive 
element :  it  is  more  than  mere  awareness,  it  is  a  judgment 
which  maintains  itself ;  and  a  religious  belief  is  one  on 
which  the  individual  is  prepared  to  act.  The  sense  of 
reality,  however,  which  is  given  with  belief  could  not  be 
generated  by  a  purely  intellectual  act.  For  the  judgment 
by  which  we  affirm  a  fiction  in  which  we  do  not  believe, 
does  not  differ  in  its  structure  from  one  in  which  we  affirm 
a  fact  in  which  we  do  believe.  There  is  something  more 
in  belief  than  judgment,  but  in  the  case  of  such  an 
elementary  act  it  is  not  easy  to  say  exactly  what  this 
something  more,  this  specific  quality  is.  Professor  Stout, 
for  instance,  speaks  of  belief  as  "  a  unique  mode  in  which 
consciousness  refers  to  the  object." l  The  intensity  of 
belief,  as  well  as  its  inwardness  and  personal  character, 
is  distinctly  due  to  the  presence  of  an  emotional  element. 
The  influence  of  feeling  seems  to  make  the  difference 
between  an  impersonal  opinion  and  a  personal  conviction. 
"An  idea  assented  to  feels  different  from  a  fictitious 
idea  that  fancy  alone  presents  to  us,"  says  Hume  ;  and 
he  traces  to  a  '  peculiar  feeling '  the  power  of  belief 
to  invest  ideas  with  vividness  and  stability.2  But  along 
with  this  superior  liveliness  and  force  which  Hume  noted 
in  belief,  there  goes  also  the  feeling  that  the  object 
obliges  us  to  think  so  about  it.  Belief,  unlike  fancy  or 

1  Analytic  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  p.  238. 

*  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  ed.  Selby  Bigge,  pp.  96  ff.,  624  ff. 


84  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS   OF   RELIGION 

supposition,  is  not  a  state  purely  dependent  on  the  will  of 
the  subject.  It  is  the  recognition  of  something  which  is, 
something  we  do  not  make,  but  which  makes  us  think 
about  it  in  the  way  we  do.  But  while  there  is  this 
coercive  element  in  belief,  it  is  well  to  repeat  that  the 
activity  of  the  will — the  steady  acting  out  of  our  beliefs — 
is  of  great  value  in  giving  them  vitality  and  persistence. 
If  we  do  not  make  our  beliefs  '  working-values/  the  feeling- 
tone  which  gives  them  reality  appears  to  fade. 

The  relation  of  the  subject  to  the  object  in  religion  is 
psychologically  one  of  strong  belief,  and  this  continues  to 
be  a  condition  of  the  satisfactory  working  of  the  relation. 
The  presence  of  doubt  or  uncertainty  always  means  a 
lessening  of  religious  vitality.  At  the  lowest  stage  of 
religious  development  belief  is  greatly  facilitated  by  the 
strength  of  the  emotional  reactions  of  early  man.  The 
individual  believes  easily,  because  his  mind  lacks  those 
systematised  ideas  which  inhibit  fresh  suggestions  that 
will  not  cohere  with  them.  The  development  of  such 
mental  systems  is  the  condition  of  a  critical  attitude  to 
the  impressions  that  come  from  the  environment.  The 
possession  of  these  systems  by  racial  inheritance  gives 
civilised  man  a  great  advantage  over  his  barbarous 
ancestors.  The  civilised  man  may  be  a  creature  "  sicklied 
o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought,"  but  he  is  saved  at  all 
events  from  the  consequences  of  a  boundless  credulity. 

In  the  maintenance  of  religious  belief  there  are  two 
influences  which  operate  constantly,  and  at  every  level  of 
development.  The  first  of  these  may  be  called  the  social 
factor  in  belief.  Neither  the  spirits  of  the  savage  nor 
the  God  of  the  civilised  man  are  the  objects  of  a  belief 
which  is  peculiar  to  himself :  he  knows  his  belief  about 
them  is  also  the  belief  of  his  tribe  or  race.  Man  is  a 
social  being  who  has  an  instinctive  dislike  of  isolation ; 
and  the  social  atmosphere  is  the  medium  which  sustains 
beliefs  in  the  minds  of  individuals.  In  the  very  fact  that 
he  thinks  and  holds  for  true  what  all  his  fellows  around 
him  do,  man  sees  a  pledge  and  an  assurance  that  he  is  not 


THE   RELIGIOUS    RELATION  85 

mistaken.  Common  belief  is  the  ground  of  common 
action,  which  in  its  turn  reinforces  belief;  and  what 
appeals  to  all  in  the  same  way  seems  to  bear  the  stamp 
of  reality.  In  early  culture  the  dominance  of  the  group 
over  the  individual  is  reflected  in  the  monotonous  identity 
of  beliefs  in  the  members.  And  the  force  of  the  social 
factor  is  enhanced  by  the  influence  of  tradition.  At  every 
level  of  culture  the  power  of  tradition  in  determining 
belief  is  apparent.  The  present  age  is  linked  by  a  con- 
tinuous chain  to  a  distant  past,  and  the  beliefs  of  to-day 
have  been  handed  down  from  the  fathers  to  the  children 
through  many  generations.  Society  with  its  long  tradition 
thus  becomes  a  constraining  power  over  the  individual, 
and  he  is  almost  impotent  to  cast  off  the  spell  of  its 
authority.  The  savage,  when  asked  a  reason  for  a  religious 
rite,  deems  it  sufficient  to  reply,  that  it  is  an  immemorial 
custom  of  his  tribe.  Hence  the  conservatism  which  is  a 
note  of  primitive  culture,  the  inhospitality  to  new  ideas, 
and  the  slow  rate  of  progress  which  is  everywhere  mani- 
fest. But  even  in  a  highly  civilised  and  progressive 
society,  beliefs  which  remain  purely  individual  are 
ineffective  and  do  not  maintain  themselves :  in  order  to 
become  working  forces  they  must  enlist  the  support  of 
society,  and  become  living  convictions  shared  by  many. 
The  continuity  of  religious  beliefs  is  secured  by  the 
fact  that  they  are  part  of  the  social  inheritance  to  which 
each  individual  falls  heir.  He  assimilates  them  in  youth, 
and  in  manhood  they  have  insensibly  become  part  of  his 
way  of  thinking.  For  example,  at  present  the  creed  of  a 
church  is  not  maintained  by  the  way  in  which  it  appeals 
to  the  reason  of  the  great  majority  of  those  who  profess  it. 
Many  decent  people  would  be  puzzled  to  give  a  reason  for 
the  faith  they  profess.  They  accept  it  largely  because  it 
has  the  sanction  of  society,  and  is  part  of  the  system  of 
tradition  and  custom  under  which  they  have  grown  up  and 
lived  their  lives. 

The   second  factor  which  contributes  to  the  mainten- 
ance of  religious  belief  is  its  constant  expression  in  religious 


86  THE   PSYCHICAL   BASIS    OF    RELIGION 

acts.  If  emotion  vivifies,  it  is  the  will  which  gives 
substance  and  fixity  to  religious  ideas  by  bringing  them 
into  an  intimate  connection  with  life.  It  is  especially^ 
through  the  common  cultus,  which  is  the  permanent  centre 
of  religion,  that  religious  belief  in  its  social  aspect 
acquires  its  prevailing  strength.  The  cult  is  a  kind  of 
dramatic  acting  out  of  beliefs  in  which  all  the  individuals 
of  a  group  share,  and  by  constant  repetition  it  gives  force 
to  the  ideas  which  underlie  it.  Every  vital  impulse  which 
takes  possession  of  the  mind  necessarily  seeks  utterance  in 
action,  as  Wundt  has  said,  and  it  is  acts  of  worship  which 
give  stated  and  recognised  expression  to  the  religious  im- 
pulse.1 Hence  the  cultus  is  an  indispensable  part  of 
every  religion,  and  religious  belief  as  a  social  force  could 
not  flourish  without  it.  Social  worship  brings  home  in 
dramatic  fashion  to  the  worshipper  the  fact  that  his  belief 
is  shared  and  attested  by  the  religious  community  of 
which  he  is  a  member.  If  worship  is  not  the  whole  of 
religion,  it  is  a  great  and  vital  part  of  it ;  and  no  historic 
religion  but  has  given  to  it  a  central  place.  Even  the 
votaries  of  a  new  religion,  like  the  religion  of  Humanity, T 
recognise  that  without  worship  of  some  kind  their  faith 
has  no  chance  of  surviving.  On  the  point  with  which 
we  are  now  concerned — the  bearing  of  the  cultus  on 
belief — it  is  well  to  note,  that  organised  worship 
strengthens  belief  by  connecting  and  giving  some  degree 
of  cohesion  to  the  separate  beliefs  which  are  implied  in 
the  religious  consciousness.  I  have  spoken  hitherto  of 
belief  in  a  divine  object,  but  strictly  one  should  rather 
speak  of  beliefs.  Man's  attitude  to  divine  powers  is 
always  more  than  the  single  belief  that  they  exist :  it  also 
involves  the  conviction  that  these  powers  are  capable  of 
different  attitudes  to  man  corresponding  to  specific  acts  on 
man's  part.  As  man  develops  so  does  his  conception  of 
the  gods,  and  the  structure  of  beliefs  becomes  complex. 
These  are  related  to  one  another  and  expressed  in  the 
cultus,  and  the  feelings  and  sentiments  which  worship 
1  Vttkerpsijchologie,  Mythus  und  Religion,  Bd.  ii.  pt.  3,  p.  738. 


THE   RELIGIOUS    RELATION  87 

evokes  help  to  cement  them  together.  Hence  a  kind  of 
system  of  belief  develops,  and  each  single  belief  receives 
support  from  the  system  in  which  it  has  a  place.  It 
becomes  difficult  to  discard  one  element  when  this  cannot 
be  done  without  weakening  the  other  elements  which  are 
connected  with  it.  Accordingly,  when  a  religious  doctrine 
is  assailed,  those  who  attack  it  commonly  try  to  show, 
in  the  first  instance,  that  it  does  not  form  a  necessary 
part  of  the  structure  of  belief. 

We  conclude,  then,  that  religious  belief,  which  repre- 
sents the  objective  aspect  of  religious  experience,  is 
essentially  dependent  on  the  mediation  of  society.  From 
the  social  whole  it  derives  stability  and  continuity.  As 
far  back  as  we  can  trace  religion  we  find  that,  like 
language,  it  is  a  social  heritage,  and  the  single  man  does 
little  or  nothing  in  the  way  of  invention  or  innovation. 
The  religious  relation  develops,  but  in  primitive  society 
the  process  is  so  slow  that  it  proceeds  without  observation. 
The  broad  principle  on  which  advance  takes  place  is,  that 
man's  growing  knowledge  of  himself  and  the  world  must 
be  reflected  in  his  conception  of  the  divine  object.  But 
a  rapidity  of  movement  which  amounts  to  visible  revolution 
is  only  brought  about  with  the  breaking  up  of  the  old 
social  medium  and  the  rise  of  new  and  larger  forms  of 
social  organisation.  These  far-reaching  changes  weaken 
the  power  of  old  tradition,  and  lift  man's  eyes  to  the 
vision  of  wider  horizons.  He  then  sets  to  work  to  re- 
organise his  beliefs,  and  a  revised  and  enlarged  system 
comes  into  being  which  gradually  acquires  a  prestige  of 
its  own.  But  at  whatever  stage  man  stands,  and  in 
whatever  terms  he  conceives  the  relation  between  himself 
and  the  object  of  his  faith,  what  he  seeks  in  the  religious 
relationship  is  the  harmony  and  satisfaction  of  his  inner 
nature,  which  he  can  never  find  in  his  prosaic  and  often 
unkindly  environment. 


CHAPTER  II. 
THE  BEGINNINGS  AND  GROWTH  OF  RELIGION. 

A. — TRIBAL  RELIGION. 

IT  is  impossible  to  give  a  clear  conception  of  the  function 
and  meaning  of  religion  without  some  study  of  religious 
ideas  in  their  beginnings  and  growth.  The  nature  of  an 
idea,  institution,  or  phase  of  culture  must  be  reached,  if 
it  is  to  be  reached  at  all,  by  an  examination  of*  its  process 
of  development.  But  one  can  hardly  enter  on  a  survey 
like  the  present  without  feeling  oppressed  by  the  mass 
and  complexity  of  the  materials  which  have  to  be  handled. 
For  this  is  a  field  in  which  many  workers  have  been  busy, 
and  the  relevant  matter  has  increased  enormously  in  bulk 
during  recent  years.  Moreover,  various  points  in  regard 
to  the  origin  and  relationship  of  different  religious  con- 
ceptions are  by  no  means  settled,  and  to  discuss  these 
questions  in  detail  would  occupy  an  altogether  dispro- 
portionate amount  of  space.  In  the  present  chapter  we 
can  only  offer  a  somewhat  rapid  sketch ;  but,  such  as  it 
is,  it  seems  necessary  to  the  proper  working  out  of  our 
general  theme. 

A  preliminary  question  arises  in  regard  to  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  material.  By  what  method  and  on  what 
principle  are  religions  to  be  classified  ?  Older  classifications, 
like  that  of  Hegel,  are  too  much  biassed  by  speculative 
ideas,  and  in  the  light  of  modern  knowledge  are  out  of 
date.  More  recently,  Siebeck,  in  his  Religionsphilosophie, 
divides  religions  into  Primitive  Religion,  Morality-Religion, 
and  Redemptive  Religion.  But  the  division  is  bound  up 


TRIBAL    RELIGION  89 

with  a  particular  theory  of  the  nature  of  religion  which 
is  at  least  arguable,  and  the  line  of  demarcation  between 
Morality-Keligion  and  Kedemptive  Eeligion  is  by  no  means 
clear.1  Tiele  has  contented  himself  with  the  broad  dis- 
tinction between  Nature  Eeligions  and  Ethical  Eeligions. 
In  theory  the  distiction  is  plain,  but  in  practice  the 
boundary  between  natural  and  ethical  religion  is  not 
readily  defined.  The  two  shade  into  one  another;  and 
Tiele's  classification  involves  the  grouping  together  of 
much  material  of  a  somewhat  heterogeneous  character 
under  the  general  description  of  "ethical  religion."  On 
the  whole  it  is  better  to  follow  a  mode  of  division  sug- 
gested by  the  historic  evolution  of  religion  itself.  There 
are  two  critical  points  in  the  historic  development  of  the 
religious  consciousness :  the  transition  from  tribal  to 
national  religion,  and  the  transition  from  national  to 
universal  religion.  This  seems  to  be  the  simplest  and 
clearest  method  of  arrangement,  and  it  has  the  advantage 
of  being  true  to  the  Platonic  principle  of  dividing  the 
body  at  the  natural  joints.  In  following  it  we  are  not 
calling  on  the  reader  to  make  assumptions  beyond  what 
are  justified  by  the  facts  themselves.  Accordingly  I 
begin  this  survey  by  an  examination  of  the  body  of  beliefs 
and  practices  which  are  fitly  grouped  together  under  the 
general  designation  of  tribal  religion. 

In  order  to  gain  a  satisfactory  view  of  the  phenomena 
of  tribal  religion,  it  will  be  convenient  to  commence  with 
a  statement  of 

(a)  Primitive  Religious  Ideas. 

In  the  previous  chapter  we  saw  that  the  origin  and  the 
form  of  man's  religious  ideas  could  not  be  explained  from 
the  side  of  his  environment.  Stimulus  from  the  environ- 
ment there  was,  but  the  specific  character  of  religious 
conceptions  was  due  to  the  reaction  of  the  mind.  Involved 
in  this  mental  reaction  and  working  through  it  there  are 

1  The  principle  which  underlies  and  determines  Siebeck's  classification 
is,  that  the  essence  of  religion  is  Weltvemeinung. 


90  BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

two  principles.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  animistic 
conception  of  the  world,  a  conception  not  in  itself  religious, 
but  forming  the  basis  on  which  religious  ideas  are 
developed.  And  then  there  is  the  life-experience  of  the 
human  individual,  which  prompts  the  movement  of  the 
whole  self  towards  a  divine  object  conceived  as  ministering 
to  the  needs  of  the  subject.  Neither  the  animistic  nor  the 
experiential  factor  acts  independently,  but  both  meet  and 
coalesce  in  the  beginnings  of  religion.  The  term  animism, 
it  should  be  said,  requires  to  be  clearly  defined,  for  it  is 
sometimes  used  loosely  alike  for  the  belief  that  external 
things  are  possessed  of  a  life  akin  to  man's,  and  for  the 
belief  in  spirits  everywhere  present  in  nature.  The  latter 
is  a  somewhat  more  advanced  notion,  and  can  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  mere  endowment  of  natural  objects 
with  life.  Spiritism  proceeds  on  the  assumption  that  a 
spirit  possesses  or  uses  the  object  as  its  instrument. 
Tiele  has  denied  that  there  was  any  nature- worship  apart 
from  Spiritism,  but  it  is  possible  there  was  a  venera- 
tion of  natural  objects  and  forces  simply  because  they 
seemed  to  man  to  be  alive  like  himself.  Traces  of  a 
worship  addressed  to  concrete  things  are  to  be  found  among 
the  Finns  and  Samoyedes ;  and  among  the  peoples  of 
classical  antiquity  vestiges  of  an  original  worship  of  rivers 
and  of  the  element  of  fire  survived.1  Kecently  the  question 
lias  been  raised  whether  there  was  not  a  pre-animistic  stage 
of  religion, — a  stage  where  a  vague  awe  of  the  supernatural 
prevailed,  and  that  independently  of  any  personification  of 
elements  in  nature  or  the  attribution  of  souls  to  things.2 
The  primeval  man,  in  presence  of  the  moving  spectacle  of 
nature,  conceived  to  be  the  expression  of  living  power,  felt 
an  awe  in  which  fear,  wonder,  and  reverence  were  mingled. 
So  it  is  argued,  and  it  is  not  unlikely.  But  if  man  did 

1  A.  ReVille's  Religions  des  Peujrtes  non  tivilists,  vol.  ii.  p.  181  ff. 

8  By  E.  Clodd  and  R.  R.  Marett.  Vid.  the  paper  of  the  former,  "  Pre- 
anitnistic  Stages  in  Religion,"  Transactions  of  the  Third  International 
Congress  for  the  History  of  Religions,  and  the  Preface  to  the  book  of  the 
latter,  The  Threshold  of  Religion,  1909. 


TRIBAL   RELIGION  91 

pass  through  this  stage,  he  was  not  yet  religious :  religion 
was  only  in  the  making.  For  this  psychical  experience  is 
a  blended  whole,  and  it  must  undergo  differentiation  ere 
religion  in  the  proper  sense  can  be  said  to  be  present. 
Religion  postulates  a  conscious  relationship  and  a  distinc- 
tion of  factors,  and  vague  feeling  must  advance  to  a 
conception  of  objects  able  to  affect  man  for  good  or  evil 
before  the  religious  bond  can  come  into  being.  The 
recognition  of  a  constant  relation  to  powers  who  can  do  for 
man  what  he  cannot  do  for  himself  is  involved  in  the  idea 
of  religion,  and  psychical  experience  which  has  not  reached 
this  conception  is  sub-religious. 

The  religious  significance  of  Animism  is,  that  man  fits 
the  object  for  its  religious  function  by  endowing  it  with  a 
soul  like  his  own.  But  between  the  deification  of  things 
in  nature  like  river  and  cloud,  tree  and  sun,  and  the 
conception  of  them  as  possessing  a  soul,  there  is  no  hard 
and  fast  distinction.  Even  the  instinctive  endowment  of 
an  object  with  power  is  to  invest  it  with  a  rudimentary 
soul.  To  attribute  a  soul  to  it  is  only  to  define  more 
clearly  in  terms  of  man's  own  experience  the  power  which 
works  within  it.  An  elementary  distinction  of  inner  and 
outer  has  now  begun  to  develop,  which,  when  applied  to  the 
object,  tends  to  make  it  more  suitable  for  reverence.  The 
soul,  there  is  little  reason  to  doubt,  was  at  first  thought 
to  be  bound  to  the  object,  and  only  able  to  work  through 
it.1  The  great  body  of  evidence  which  bears  on  animistic 
nature-worship  shows  that  it  was  essentially  connected 
with  a  belief  in  souls  operating  in  the  things  which 
attracted  man's  curiosity  and  wonder  or  excited  his  fear. 

What  particularly  moved  man  to  the  selection  of  objects 
for  reverence  was  the  idea  that  they  had  power  to  help  or 
to  harm  him.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  so- 
called  '  minor  nature-worship/  i.e.  the  worship  of  local 
objects  like  trees,  stones,  and  springs,  was  developed  before 
man  was  attracted  to  worship  the  greater  powers  of 

JWundt,  in  his  VolTcerpsychologie,  conceives  the  'free'  soul  to  be  a 
development  from  the  '  bound '  soul.  Vid.  Bd.  ii.  pt.  2,  p.  1  ff. 


92  BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

nature,  such  as  sun  and  moon,  stars,  clouds,  and  wind. 
What  does  seem  evident  is,  that  the  cult  of  local  objects 
soon  came  to  preponderate  in  tribal  worship,  and  this, 
perhaps,  because  it  was  linked  more  readily  with  those 
magical  practices  which  are  as  old  as  religion  itself.  The 
tokens  of  an  extremely  widespread  and  once  vigorous  cult 
of  local  objects  •  are  to  be  found  far  and  near,  among 
Semitic  as  well  as  among  Aryan  and  Turanian  races ;  and 
they  can  still  be  traced  in  the  beliefs  and  superstitions  of 
the  people  even  in  highly  civilised  lands.  Veneration  of 
animals  appears  to  be  as  old  as  the  worship  of  natural 
objects  and  forces,  and  no  doubt  the  two  existed  side  by 
side.  More  especially  did  those  animals  which  impressed 
early  man  as  uncanny,  or  which  were  dangerous,  become 
the  objects  of  his  worship.  Among  the  former  the  snake 
was  prominent,  and  serpent-worship  has  prevailed  in  many 
parts  of  the  world.  It  flourished  greatly  in  India  and 
America.  Among  the  Negroes  of  Benin  the  python  is 
revered.  Of  dangerous  animals  we  find  the  crocodile 
reverenced  in  ancient  Egypt,  and  among  the  Malays  the 
worship  of  the  tiger  is  common.  It  is  not  easy  to  say  in 
some  cases  what  led  to  the  selection  of  a  particular  animal, 
but  a  creature  which  seemed  mysterious  or  inspired  fear 
naturally  invited  propitiation.  And  if  we  deem  it  strange 
that  worship  should  be  addressed  as  readily  to  a  tree  or 
stone  as  to  a  serpent,  we  have  to  remember  that  the 
primitive  mind  drew  no  distinction  in  principle  between 
the  one  and  the  other.  The  curiously  shaped  stone,  the 
fruit-bearing  tree,  and  the  fierce  animal  which  threatened 
his  life,  might  each  appear  to  the  savage  well  deserving  of 
reverence,  the  first  for  the  secret  properties  it  possessed, 
the  second  for  the  good  things  it  gave,  and  the  last  for  the 
hurt  it  might  do. 

The  process  which  transformed  general  animistic  beliefs 
into  a  fully  fledged  Spiritism  may  be  conceived  as  follows : 
The  essential  point  was  the  liberation  of  the  '  bound  soul/ 
in  other  words,  the  gradual  loosening  of  the  tie  which 
linked  the  soul  to  a  particular  object  or  local  habitation. 


TRIBAL    RELIGION  93 

This  accomplished,  the  soul  became  a  spirit  freely  moving. 
The  key  to  this  transition  is  found  in  man's  psychical 
experience :  the  dream-consciousness  played  a  great  part  in 
liberating  the  soul  from  bondage  to  the  particular  thing. 
The  primitive  mind  had  no  idea  of  a  purely  illusory 
experience,  just  as  it  had  no  notion  of  a  soul  which  was 
not  in  some  sense  material.  The  only  interpretation 
primitive  man  could  put  upon  his  dreams  was,  that  his 
soul  or  second  self  had  for  the  time  being  left  his  body  and 
roamed  at  large  in  the  world.  He  awoke  where  he  lay 
down,  but  in  the  interval  his  soul  had  been  abroad  on 
strange  adventures.  His  belief  that  his  soul  or  double 
could  detach  itself  from  his  body  found  confirmation  from 
other  sources.  In  his  dreams  the  spirits  of  his  absent 
companions  or  his  dead  kinsfolk  appeared  to  him,  a  proof 
that  they  too  possessed  a  second  self  that  could  be  absent 
from  the  body.  Even  the  shadow  of  himself,  now 
accompanying  him  on  his  way  and  anon  mysteriously 
vanishing,  was  evidence  to  him  that  he  had  a  freely 
moving  and  finer  self.  On  the  principle,  then,  that  his 
own  soul  could  leave  his  body,  primitive  man  conceived 
animated  things  to  be  possessed  of  spirits  who  dwelt  in 
them  for  the  time  being,  and  used  them  as  their  instru- 
ments. The  spirit  might  desert  the  tree  or  the  spring  and 
return  to  it  again.  So  man  peopled  his  world  with  a  host 
of  spiritual  beings,  who  could  be  approached  and  reverenced 
through  the  material  things  in  which  they  made  their 
dwelling,  but  who  were  themselves  invisible.  Spiritism 
marks  an  advance  on  mere  Animism,  and  implies  a 
development  of  the  idea  of  soul.  The  existence  of  a  pre- 
spiritistic  stage  is  a  legitimate  inference ;  but  Ethnology 
supplies  us  with  no  direct  evidence  of  tribes  who  stood  at 
a  lower  level  than  Spiritism.  Some  of  the  lowest  races 
known,  for  instance  the  native  Australians,  the  Fuegians, 
and  the  Bushmen  of  South  Africa,  are  fully  developed 
spiritists.  The  lower  stage,  represented  by  the  'bound 
soul,'  is  a  psychological  inference. 

It  is  sufficiently  clear  that  Fetishism  is  not  the  lowest 


94  BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

form  of  religion,  as  some  have  supposed,  but  is  the  outcome 
and  expression  of  a  fully  articulated  Spiritism.  A  fetish 
may  be  a  stock  or  stone,  a  claw  or  even  a  detached  bit  of 
a  human  body :  the  essential  point  is  the  belief  that  it 
has  mysterious  powers  which  are  due  to  the  presence  of 
a  spirit  within  it.  Between  the  fetish  and  its  spirit  there 
is,  however,  no  inner  connexion :  the  spirit  is  capriciously 
present  in  the  object  and  it  may  desert  it,  when  the  thing 
will  lose  all  its  magic  efficacy.  Arbitrarily  selected,  the 
fetish  is  readily  discarded  by  the  fetish- worshipper :  the 
West  African  negro,  for  example,  flings  the  fetish  away 
which  obstinately  refuses  to  work.  The  background  of 
Fetishism  is  always  a  well-developed  Spiritism,  and  fetish- 
worship  is  an  attempt  on  man's  part  to  control  the  spirits 
for  his  own  purposes.  Fetishism  is  intimately  allied  to 
Magic :  it  signifies  the  preponderance  of  the  magical 
element  in  religion,  and  also  denotes  the  diversion  of  an 
existing  religion  into  wrong  lines.  Fetishism  is  a  deteriora- 
tion, not  a  development ;  it  means  that  man  will  not 
recognise  that  he  must  remain  dependent  on  higher  Powers, 
but  seeks  to  compel  them  to  subserve  his  wishes.  Conse- 
quently, when  the  cult  of  the  fetish  plays  a  dominant  part, 
the  power  of  a  religion  to  evolve  fresh  spiritual  ideas  fades 
and  dies. 

Though  Spiritism  readily  gives  rise  to  Fetishism,  it 
also  develops  in  higher  and  more  fruitful  ways.  Spiritism 
is  a  stage  through  which  religion  everywhere  has  passed, 
for  its  traces  are  world-wide;  and  there  must  be  some 
link  of  connexion  between  it  and  other  forms  of  primitive 
belief.  Let  us  note  at  present  that  the  doctrine  of  spirits 
soon  receives  extended  application,  for  it  becomes  to  the 
savage  a  way  of  explaining  the  mysterious  and  the  fearsome. 
He  freely  invokes  the  ubiquitous  spirits  to  account  for 
what  he  does  not  understand.  To  his  rude  imagination 
"  millions  of  spiritual  beings  roam  the  earth  " :  they  haunt 
the  mountain  tops,  the  waters,  and  the  forest  trees,  and 
they  have  become  familiar  to  a  later  age  under  the  names 
of  oreads,  nymphs,  and  dryads.  Disease  was  a  mystery  to 


TRIBAL   RELIGION  95 

the  savage,  and  was  explained  as  possession  by  a  spirit. 
Disease-spirits  figure  largely  among  the  Malays,  Dyaks, 
Malagasy,  and  African  negroes,  with  the  consequent  develop- 
ment of  appropriate  means  of  extracting  and  expelling 
them.  The  malicious  sprite  had  its  counterpoise  in  the 
guardian  spirit,  the  good  genius  who  accompanies  a  man 
through  life.  And  a  man  himself,  preferably  a  chieftain 
or  a  king,  was  sometimes  regarded  as  a  spirit  clothed  in 
human  attributes,  and  was  credited  with  superhuman 
powers.1 

After  this  brief  reference  to  the  development  of 
Spiritism  we  turn  to  consider  its  relationship  to  Ancestor- 
worship  and  to  Totemism.  These  specific  manifestations  of 
religion  have  been  sometimes  thought  to  be  outgrowths 
independent  of  spirit-worship,  though  showing  a  connexion 
with  one  another.2  The  evidence,  however,  is  decidedly  in 
favour  of  the  priority  of  Spiritism,  and  Totemism  certainly 
cannot  be  shown  to  have  been  universal.  The  cult  of  the 
spirits  of  ancestors  is  undoubtedly  old,  but  it  is  a  specific 
application  of  Spiritism  and  presupposes  it.  Indeed,  a 
superstitious  fear  of  the  spirits  of  the  dead  runs  through 
all  the  lower  culture,  and  is  found  in  the  rudest  societies. 
Fear  of  the  ghost  has  left  its  impress  on  many  burial 
customs,  which  show,  in  a  crude  fashion,  attempts  to 
neutralise  the  power  of  the  ghost  to  do  harm.3  But  the 
deliberate  worship  of  ancestors  is  something  higher  than 

1  Dr.  J.  G.  Frazer,  in  his  Golden  Bough,  has  made  much  of  '  divine 
kings '  as  spirit-incarnations.     On  the  sanctity  of  kings  and  the  magical 
powers  attributed  to  them  by  the  Malays,  Mr.  W.  W.  Skeat  gives  interesting 
information  in  his  Malay  Magic,  1900,  p.  23  ff. 

2  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  in  La  Citt  Antique,  regards  the  worship  of  spirits 
in  nature  and  the  spirits  of  ancestors  as  equally  primitive  sources  of  religion. 
Pfleiderer  (Religionsphilosophie,  1896,  p.  27)  asks  if  Totemism  may  not  be 
the  common  root  of  both.     There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  answer  must 
be  in  the  negative.     To  suppose  that  Totemism  is  the  oldest  form  of  religion 
is,  as  Eduard  Meyer  remarks,  "a  complete  misapprehension  of  the  actual 
facts."    Elemente  der  Anthropologie,  p.  110. 

3  Cp.  Rohde's  Psyche,  p.  22  ff.     Fear  of  the  spirit  has  been  held  to  ex- 
plain the  custom  of  burning  the  bodies  of  the  dead.     For  another  view,  see 
Ridgeway's  The  Early  Age  of  Greece,  1901,  vol.  i.  p.  534  ff. 


96  BEGINNINGS    AND   GROWTH    OF    RELIGION 

this  superstitious  terror,  and  presupposes  some  basis  in 
family  and  social  feeling,  some  sense  of  the  unity  and 
continuity  of  the  clan  or  tribe.  None  the  less  it  seems 
to  be  true  that  savage  peoples  may  believe  in  ancestral 
spirits  without  actually  worshipping  them.  There  is 
evidence  for  this  among  the  Central  Australian  tribes  and 
West  African  negroes.1  At  the  same  time  it  is  difficult  to 
draw  a  line  between  fear  or  respect  and  the  reverence 
which  expresses  the  attitude  of  worship.  In  any  case 
Ancestor-worship  is  widely  diffused,  and  the  feeling  which 
prompted  the  members  of  the  tribe  and  family  to  trace 
their  security  and  well-being  to  the  guardian  spirits  of 
their  ancestors  is  easily  intelligible.  In  the  religions  of 
China  and  ancient  Eome  the  cult  of  ancestors  has  left  its 
mark  on  the  whole  religious  life  of  the  people. 

Totemism  is  a  phenomenon  which,  in  its  religious 
aspect,  is  allied  to  Ancestor-worship,  and  has  been  found 
in  various  parts  of  the  world,  e.g.  in  North  America,  Africa, 
and  Australia.  The  totem  is  a  species  of  animal,  and 
occasionally  a  species  of  plant,  whose  life  is  conceived  to 
be  bound  up  with  the  life  of  the  tribe,  and  to  be  closely 
linked  with  the  well-being  of  the  social  whole.  The  totem, 
which  in  some  cases  is  an  individual  animal,  is  the  visible 
embodiment  of  the  unity  of  the  society,  and  its  life  is 
mysteriously  connected  with  that  of  all  the  members  of 
the  group.  The  totem  is  treated  as  a  sacred  animal ;  it 
may  not  be  killed  or  eaten  except  on  solemn  and  sacra- 
mental occasions ;  and  it  is  commonly  venerated  as  a 
divine  ancestor  who,  in  the  remote  past,  brought  the  group 
into  existence.2  With  Totemism  there  are  associated  cere- 
monies of  initiation  into  the  tribe,  various  taboos,  and  the 

1  Spencer  and  Gillen  (Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia)  say  the 
Central  Australians  attribute  superhuman  powers  to  the  spirit-ancestors, 
but  do  not  seek  their  help  or  try  to  propitiate  them  (pp.  490-491).  Miss 
Kingsley,  in  her  West  African  Studies,  says  West  Africa  has  not  deified 
ancestors  (pp.  131-134). 

3  Spencer  and  Gillen,  op.  cit.,  report  that  while  the  totem  is  only  eaten 
by  the  Arunta  and  Kaitish  tribes  at  a  sacred  ceremony,  with  the  tribes  to 
the  north  of  the  Kaitish  it  is  not  even  eaten  ceremonially. 


TRIBAL    RELIGION  97 

practice  of  exogamy.  These  practices  are  not  in  themselves 
necessarily  religious,  and  it  is  possible  that  Totemism  in  some 
cases  is  a  social  custom  rather  than  a  religion.  Among 
the  African  Bantu  tribes,  for  example,  the  totem  is  said 
not  to  be  worshipped.  By  primitive  man  totemistic  rites 
are  invested  with  magical  significance :  they  may  be  a 
means  of  increasing  the  food  supply  of  the  tribe,  and  the 
totem  itself  is  a  magical  protector.  The  religious  im- 
portance of  Totemism  lies  in  the  social  motive  which  works 
behind  it.  Animism  and  Spiritism  are  individualistic  in 
their  origin ;  they  are  developed  out  of  the  experience  of 
individuals :  but  the  explanation  of  the  totem  is  the  felt 
unity  of  the  group,  that  kinship  of  blood  and  life  of  which 
it  is  the  visible  token  and  guarantee.  The  religious  signifi- 
cance of  the  totem  implies  the  social  significance  of  religion. 
Totemism  is  not  a  universal  stage  of  religious  development ; 
but  where  it  nourishes  it  fosters  the  growth  of  higher 
religious  ideas :  it  lends  a  religious  sanction  to  tribal 
loyalty  and  mutual  obligation.1  "  By  establishing  an 
essential  kinship  between  man  and  the  object  of  his 
reverence,  and  by  realising  a  fellowship  between  all  the 
members  of  the  tribe  in  religious  rites,  it  contains,  though 
no  doubt  in  a  primitive  and  quite  magical  fashion,  the 
germ  of  mystic  and  sacramental  religious  forms."  2 

Spiritism  as  a  religion  has  well-marked  limits,  and 
Tribal  Keligion  has  not  succeeded  in  decidedly  transcending 
these  limits.  In  the  higher  forms  of  Tribal  Religion  the 
spirits  begin  to  be  organised  and  to  receive  special  functions 
or  departments :  there  are  spirits  of  vegetation,  of  disease, 
ancestor  spirits,  and  such  like.  The  original  sphere  of 
their  operations  comes  to  be  extended.  For  example,  the 
spirit  of  the  tree,  the  mountain,  and  the  spring  is  expanded 
into  and  supplemented  by  spirits  of  the  forest,  the  earth, 

1  The  fact  that  animals  are  sometimes  associated  with  the  gods  of  a 
national  religion,  as  in  Egypt  and  Greece,  does  not  necessarily  prove  that 
the  nation  passed  through  a  totemistic  stage  :  it  may  only  point  to  a 
primitive  animal-worship. 

a  De  la  Saussaye,  Religionsgeschichte,  3rd  ed.  vol.  i.  p.  15. 

7 


98  BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

and  the  sea.  Tribal  worship  in  this  way  reveals  a  certain 
advance  on  crude  animism ;  for  it  posits  a  supersensuous 
world  of  spirits  projected  beyond  the  world  of  sense- 
perception.  But  it  does  not  decisively  develop  beyond 
this  stage.  Certain  rude  conceptions  of  a  Supreme  Spirit 
are  indeed  found  among  uncivilised  peoples.  Dim  ideas  of 
a  great  god  are  found  among  the  North  American  Indians, 
the  Zulus,  the  tribes  of  South  Eastern  Australia,  and  in 
West  Africa.  These  great  gods,  where  they  are  not  due 
to  civilised  influences,  may  be  best  explained  as  the 
product  of  the  native  mind  working  on  the  principle  of 
analogy.1  The  chieftain  or  leader  of  the  tribe  has  his 
counterpart  in  the  realm  of  spirits.  The  important  point 
is  that  the  great  god  never  enters  decisively  into  the  tribal 
worship,  nor  prevails  against  the  cult  of  spirits.  The 
inquirer  who  asks  the  reason  for  this  gets  the  sufficient 
answer,  "  Why  should  we  care  for  him,  he  does  not  help 
or  harm  us  ? "  The  reply  reveals  both  the  secret  and  the 
weakness  of  Tribal  Keligion. 


(b)  Magic  and  Eeligion. 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  existence  of  magical 
ideas  alongside  religion,  and  to  the  presence  of  magic  in 
religious  rites  and  ceremonies.  And  we  cannot  help  asking, 
What  is  the  origin  of  Magic,  and  how  is  it  related  to  Ee- 
ligion ?  In  its  nature,  magic  is  an  attempt  on  man's  part 
to  compass  his  ends  by  mysterious  or  occult  means.  Like 
religion,  it  presupposes  Animism :  it  proceeds  on  the  idea 
that  there  is  an  affinity  between  man  and  things,  in  virtue 
of  which  these  may  be  influenced  and  made  to  subserve 
human  purposes.  Magic  and  religion  have  at  least  this  in 
common,  that  they  both  aim  at  satisfying  human  needs, 
though  they  seek  to  do  so  by  different  methods.  The 

1  Vid.  Spencer  and  Gillcn,  op.  cit.  p.  491  ff.;  Howitt,  Native  Tribes  of 
South  Eastern  Australia,  1904,  p.  488  ff.  In  his  book  on  The  Todas,  1906, 
Dr.  Rivers  cites  the  case  of  the  Toda  goddess,  Teikirzi,  who  has  been 
elevated  to  an  omnipresent  and  invisible  spirit  Vid.  p.  186. 


TRIBAL    RELIGION  99 

problem  is  whether  religion  or  magic  is  the  original 
development.  It  has  sometimes  been  supposed  that  magic 
was  the  secondary  product,  and  was  a  deterioration  from 
an  existing  religion.  Like  Fetishism,  it  is  a  perversion  of 
religion,  an  attempt  on  man's  part  to  gain  by  stealth  what 
he  cannot  win  by  worship.  There  is  at  least  this  to  be 
said  for  the  theory,  that  a  rank  crop  of  superstitious  beliefs 
and  practices  is  a  common  feature  of  a  decadent  religion. 
What  is  not  proved  is  that  these  magical  ideas  depended 
for  their  existence  on  religious  conceptions :  they  may  quite 
well  have  had  an  independent  origin,  although  they  had 
become  associated  with  religion.  And  in  point  of  fact 
magic  is  found  beside  and  mingling  with  early  religion,  and 
that  where  there  can  be  no  talk  of  religious  decadence.  It 
has  seemed  more  plausible  to  some  to  invert  the  order  of 
development,  and  to  derive  religion  from  magic.  Dr. 
J.  G.  Frazer's  attempt — in  the  second  edition  of  his  Golden 
Bough — to  explain  the  rise  of  religion  as  due  to  the  failure 
of  magic  is  well  known ;  but  stated  in  this  form  the  theory 
can,  I  think,  be  refuted.  The  discredit  of  magic  is  certainly 
not  a  condition  of  the  birth  of  religion :  the  two  constantly 
exist  side  by  side,  and  religion  frequently  deteriorates  in  the 
direction  of  magic.  Nor  is  there  any  evidence  of  such  a 
sense  of  the  failure  of  magical  practices  as  is  here  suggested 
existed  in  primitive  culture.  Even  if  there  had  been  such 
a  failure  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  could  originate  religious 
ideas,  though  it  might  stimulate  them  if  they  were  already 
present.  The  derivation  of  religion  from  magic  has,  how- 
ever, been  put  in  a  form  less  open  to  criticism.  The  system 
of  magic,  it  may  be  said,  dominates  the  acts  and  ways  of 
thought  of  all  primitive  peoples,  and  out  of  the  system  of 
magic  the  body  of  ideas  and  usages  has  grown  which  we 
comprehend  under  the  name  of  religion.1  As  an  account 
of  the  outward  process  which  marked  the  genesis  of  religion, 
there  is  not  so  much  to  object  to  in  this  statement :  but  if 
we  take  it  to  mean  that  magic  is  the  sufficient  reason  of 
religion,  it  is  open  to  serious  objection.  For  there  is  that 

1  The  statement  is  that  of  Eduard  Meyer,  op.  cit.  p.  92. 


100        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

in  the  psychological  nature  of  religion  which  magic  does 
not  explain :  there  is  a  specific  difference  between  the 
religious  and  the  magical  standpoint  which  precludes  us 
from  finding  the  germ  of  religion  in  magical  practice.  The 
difference  might  be  put  thus :  the  idea  of  religion  is  depen- 
dence, that  of  magic  is  control ;  the  one  encourages  an  atti- 
tude of  trust,  the  other  an  attitude  of  self-assertion.  Though 
these  two  standpoints  are  not  sharply  separated  in  primitive 
culture,  they  never  strictly  coincide.1  And  this  differentia- 
tion, implicit  even  in  the  rudest  society,  becomes  increasingly 
clear  and  important  with  the  evolution  of  religion.  To  put 
the  case  briefly :  we  cannot  derive  religion  from  magic, 
because  even  the  beginnings  of  religion  involve  a  reaction  of 
the  human  spirit  on  experience  which  is  distinct  in  kind. 

Our  general  conclusion  therefore  is,  that  magic  and 
religion  are  not  derivable  the  one  from  the  other,  and  both 
are  equally  primitive.  Alike  they  have  their  source  in  the 
activity  of  the  human  mind  as  it  seeks  to  find  its  good  in 
the  world,  but  the  ends  towards  which  they  strive  are 
ultimately  different  in  character.  The  close  association  of 
magic  and  religion  in  early  culture  will  be  understood 
when  we  remember  that  both  involve  an  application  of 
primitive  causal  ideas  for  the  subvention  of  human  needs. 
Each  aims  at  the  bringing  about  of  certain  results ;  and,  in 
the  case  of  savage  man,  the  results  desired  are  much  the 
same  in  kind,  the  gain  of  material  goods  and  the  averting 
of  evils.  The  real  difference  appears  in  the  methods  used 
to  achieve  these  ends.  Primitive  magic  is  a  kind  of  strategy 
by  which  the  savage  imagines  he  can  influence  the  spirits 
and  bend  them  to  the  fulfilment  of  his  purposes.  The  con- 
ceptions which  underlie  these  magical  practices  are  to  our 
minds  extremely  crude,  but  they  are  deeply  rooted  in  the 
savage  mind.  They  imply,  for  instance,  an  indiscriminating 
identification  of  a  part  with  the  whole,  and  proceed  on  the 

1  There  seems  to  be  some  recognition  of  this  fact  in  Mr.  R.  R.  Marett's 
theory  that  "Magic  and  Religion  are  differentiated  out  from  a  common 
plasm  of  crude  beliefs  about  the  awful  and  occult."  Vid.  the  Preface  of  his 
Threshold  of  Religion. 


TRIBAL   RELIGION  iOJl 

naive  assumption  that  results  may  be  produced  by  imitating 
them.  Thus  any  part  of  a  man's  body,  his  hair  or  nails,  for 
example,  if  they  fall  into  the  hands  of  an  ill-disposed  per- 
son, may  be  used  to  work  harm  on  the  original  owner.  To 
make  an  image  of  an  enemy  and  then  to  maltreat  it  is  a 
good  way  of  doing  harm  to  the  person  represented  by  the 
image.  Sympathetic  magic,  the  bringing  about  of  what  you 
wish  by  imitating  it,  is  extremely  common  among  uncivilised 
peoples.  So  we  hear  of  attempts  to  provoke  a  storm  by 
striking  fire,  making  a  din,  and  scattering  water,  which  are 
meant  to  be  an  imitation  of  lightning,  thunder,  and  rain. 
By  squirting  water  from  his  mouth  the  negro  wizard  induces 
rain.  Eites  of  a  sexual  character  have  sometimes  been 
performed  in  the  belief  that  they  had  virtue  to  quicken  the 
fertility  of  the  soil.1  Among  the  Malays  the  assistance  of 
the  magician  is  invoked  in  agricultural  operations  and  in 
fishing.2  Examples  might  easily  be  multiplied,  but  this  is 
not  necessary,  for  the  far-reaching  vogue  of  magical  ideas 
in  primitive  societies  is  one  of  the  assured  results  of 
anthropological  research.  A  multitude  of  usages — some 
of  which  persist  in  the  midst  of  civilisation — has  developed 
out  of  the  magical  view  of  things.  Such  are  the  use  of 
talismans,  amulets,  and  charms ;  the  employment  of  spells, 
incantations,  and  curses;  the  practices  of  divination, 
taboo,  and  food -restriction.  It  was  natural,  too,  that  the 
mysterious  yet  efficacious  practice  of  magic  should  have 
passed  into  the  hands  of  specially  qualified  persons.  The 
medicine-man  and  the  shaman,  the  wizard  and  the  witch- 
doctor, are  found  throughout  the  uncivilised  world,  and 
their  power  and  influence  are  symptomatic  of  the  strength 
of  the  beliefs  which  brought  them  into  being.  In  some 
cases  the  sorcerer  dominates  the  community,  and  works  his 
will  through  the  superstitious  fear  he  inspires.  Thus  among 
the  Matabele,  in  Lobengula's  time,  the  witch-doctors  were 
said  to  be  as  powerful  as  the  chief,  and  no  one  was  safe 
against  their  mandate. 

1  Fid.  Dieterich,  Mutter  Erde,  p.  93  ff. 
8  Skeat,  op.  cit.  p.  57. 


'102        BEGINNINGS    AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

Though  magic,  as  we  hold,  is  definitely  differentiated 
in  its  character  from  religion,  it  is  none  the  less  true 
that,  the  further  we  reach  back  into  primitive  culture,  it 
becomes  more  difficult  to  draw  a  sharp  line  of  demarcation. 
Magical  ideas  intertwine  themselves  with  usages  which 
are  primarily  religious,  and  religious  rites  may  degenerate 
into  something  indistinguishable  from  magical  practices. 
Fetishism,  for  example,  though  it  is  commonly  treated  as 
a  phase  of  religion,  is  a  form  of  spiritism  so  impregnated 
with  magical  ideas,  that  it  might  be  treated  as  belonging 
to  the  province  of  magic  rather  than  to  the  province  of 
religion.  A  fetish  which  is  contemptuously  cast  aside 
when  it  no  longer  fulfils  its  owner's  demands,  is  hardly 
even  a  divinity  in  the  making.  In  general,  the  more  the 
objects  of  worship  remain  vague  and  undefined,  the  less  of 
individual  character  which  attaches  to  them,  the  more 
readily  do  they  become  associated  with  ideas  which  are 
magical  in  their  essence.  The  spirit  is  capricious,  and 
man  wants  to  bridle  its  caprice  for  his  own  ends :  so,  by 
a  natural  movement  of  the  mind,  the  words  which  were 
used  to  invoke  its  help  are  by  and  by  transformed  into  a 
magic  spell  which  exercises  a  mysterious  compulsion. 
Similarily,  the  rude  sacrifice  acquires  an  occult  virtue 
which  can  procure  the  good  desired.  The  sacred  ceremony 
of  eating  the  totem  animal  may  become  a  magical  means 
of  bringing  benefit  to  the  tribe.  Among  the  Australian 
Arunta  we  hear  of  a  sacramental  eating  of  the  totem  in 
order  to  increase  the  food  supply — an  illustration  of  a 
religious  rite  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  potent  magic. 
Among  primitive  peoples  the  eating  of  the  divine  animal, 
which  is  itself  a  form  of  communion  with  the  god,  is 
naturally  linked  with  belief  in  the  magical  virtue  of  the  rite. 
But  while  magical  notions  become  closely  intertwined  with 
religious  acts,  they  have  a  wider  range.  They  tend  to  spread 
themselves  over  the  whole  face  of  tribal  society ;  especially 
in  the  practice  of  taboo  they  lend  a  mysterious  sanction  to 
social  custom, — a  sanction  rooted  in  the  fear  of  the  conse- 
quences which  a  breach  of  the  restriction  would  entail. 


TRIBAL    RELIGION  103 

The  problem  of  the  bearing  of  magic  on  religion  is 
important,  and  must  be  faced  by  any  one  investigating  the 
origin  and  nature  of  religion.  A  fateful  significance 
attaches  to  the  way  in  which  the  relationship  works  out 
in  the  history  of  a  religion,  for  on  this  depends  whether  pro- 
gress will  ensue  or  retrogression.  When  religion  succeeds 
in  maintaining  its  independence  and  retaining  its  specific 
character,  then,  despite  the  intrusion  of  magical  ideas  into 
the  cult,  the  path  of  development  is  open,  and  the  evolu- 
tion of  higher  religious  ideas  is  practicable.  On  the  other 
hand,  magic  may  interweave  itself  so  closely  with  re- 
ligion, clinging  to  religious  beliefs  and  rites,  like  the  ivy 
round  the  stem  and  branches  of  the  tree,  that  the  life  of 
religion  itself  is  sapped.  Eeligion  then  degenerates  into 
a  mass  of  superstitions,  and  is  encircled  by  an  atmosphere 
of  suspicion,  fear,  and  mistrust :  in  such  an  air  the  germs 
of  what  is  high  and  holy  perish,  and  worship  at  the  best 
becomes  an  instrument  by  which  man  thinks  to  control 
nature  in  his  own  interests.  Under  such  a  system,  man 
may  indeed  be  driven  to  do  or  to  abstain  from  doing  from 
fear;  he  will  not  be  encouraged  to  be  loyal  to  higher 
powers.  A  religion  moving  in  this  direction  becomes 
destitute  of  those  purifying  and  uplifting  influences  which 
are  the  best  gifts  of  human  faith.  The  preponderance  of 
magic,  therefore,  means  the  deterioration  of  religion. 
But  while  magic  is  in  no  case  absent  from  tribal  society, 
there  are  differences  in  the  extent  to  which  it  is  practised 
and  the  degree  of  influence  it  exercises.  The  community 
which  keeps  magic  in  subordination  to  religion,  is  best 
adapted  to  enter  on  the  path  of  spiritual  development. 

(c)  The  Main  Features  of  Tribal  Religion. 

We  may  now  try  to  put  together  the  chief  points 
about  Tribal  Eeligion,  and  to  draw  some  general  con- 
clusions in  regard  to  it.  At  the  outset  it  is  important  to 
keep  in  mind  the  nature  of  the  causal  conception  which 
lies  behind  the  primitive  Weltanschauung,  and  is  implied 


104        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

in  savage  inagic  and  religion.  This  conception  is  arbitrary, 
as  we  should  term  it,  and  proceeds  by  a  free  application 
of  the  principle,  post  hoc  ergo  propter  hoc.  Tiele  relates 
how  a  Siberian  tribe  which  had  lately  seen  a  camel  for  the 
first  time,  was  visited  by  an  epidemic  of  smallpox :  the 
camel  was  straightway  regarded  as  the  cause  of  the  out- 
break of  disease.  The  case  is  typical  of  the  freedom 
with  which  barbarous  man  translates  temporal  conjunction 
into  causal  connexion.  Fancy,  prompted  by  interest  and 
feeling,  assigns  a  cause,  and  the  savage  has  no  sense  of  the 
need  of  trying  to  show  that  the  cause  assigned  is  such  as 
can  bring  about  the  effect.  When  spiritism  or  polydse- 
monism  is  rampant,  man  believes  himself  surrounded  by 
subtle  and  incalculable  influences ;  and  it  is  part  of  the 
conception  of  a  spirit  that  its  working  is  not  fully  ex- 
plicable. The  savage  translates  what  he  does  not  under- 
stand into  an  action  of  spirits  which  is  equally  unintelli- 
gible. Sickness  and  frenzy,  trance  and  hysteria,  are 
explained  through  possession  by  a  spirit.  The  negro 
interprets  the  cure  of  a  disease  by  medicine,  by  saying 
that  the  spirit  of  medicine  expels  the  spirit  of  disease. 
Hence  primitive  man's  gods  never  explain  things  in  our 
sense  of  the  word  "  explain  " ;  and  this  because  primitive 
thought  is  untroubled  by  the  need  of  finding  connexion 
and  coherency  within  experience.  In  consequence  of  the 
same  uncritical  attitude  of  mind,  the  definite  divisions 
and  distinctions  drawn  by  civilised  man  between  the 
various  objects  of  his  experience  do  not  exist  for  the 
savage,  and  things  are  blended  together  in  what  seems  to 
us  an  extraordinary  confusion.  The  organic  and  the 
inorganic,  man  and  animal,  mind  and  matter,  are  fused 
together  and  treated  as  if  there  were  no  essential  distinc- 
tions between  them.  Man  may  spring  from  an  animal, 
the  spirit  of  a  tree  may  become  incarnate  in  a  human 
being ;  and  stories  of  strange  metamorphoses  are  widely 
current  among  uncivilised  tribes,  and  are  received  and 
repeated  without  incredulity. 

It  is  in  keeping  with  this  fusion  of  the  material  and 


TRIBAL    RELIGION  105 

the  spiritual  that  the  gods  of  tribal  religion  are  not 
spiritual  beings  in  our  sense  of  the  word :  they  are  more 
or  less  materially  conceived,  and  cannot  dispense  with 
some  local  habitation.  The  savage  idea  of  soul  is  that  of 
a  thinner,  less  substantial  body :  it  is  a  shadowy  double 
or  second  self  which  locates  itself  in  the  body.  Though 
spirits  come  to  be  conceived  as  invisible  and  freely  roam- 
ing, yet  they  only  operate  through  a  material  organ  or 
instrument,  and  have  to  be  localised  in  order  to  be  invoked. 
At  the  stage  of  tribal  religion,  man  has  not  really  liberated 
himself  from  the  necessity  of  finding  and  embodying  the 
object  of  his  religious  belief  in  some  perceived  thing.  The 
idea  of  a  pure  spirit,  completely  elevated  above  sensuous 
conditions,  is  a  notion  which  transcends  the  grasp  of  the 
primitive  mind.  This  inability  to  comprehend  what  is 
ideal,  save  through  a  material  envisagement,  is  curiously 
illustrated  in  totemism.  The  totem  stands  for  the  unity 
of  the  social  group,  the  solidarity  of  the  tribe.  Primitive 
thought  was  here  struggling  with  the  idea  of  a  unity 
which  is  realised  in  a  multiplicity  of  parts,  but  which  is 
something  more  than  the  external  addition  of  part  to  part. 
This  conception  of  a  unity  realised  in  an  inner  connexion  of 
members,  is  too  subtle  and  intangible  for  the  savage ;  he 
is  compelled  to  use  for  a  substitute  an  external  and 
material  symbol.  The  totem  as  the  embodiment  of  the 
unity  of  the  tribe  is  the  material  image  of  what  defies 
presentation  to  the  senses.  Here  is  an  illustration  of  the 
necessity  under  which  early  society  was  laid  of  thinking 
the  spiritual  in  terms  of  the  material. 

The  crudeness  of  early  thinking  has  its  counterpart  in 
the  crudeness  of  the  motives  which  moved  man  at  this 
low  stage  of  development.  Man's  desires  can  never  be 
better  than  the  needs  of  which  he  is  conscious ;  and  at  the 
tribal  level  he  was  engaged  in  a  constant  struggle  with 
nature  and  in  a  recurring  warfare  with  other  tribes. 
Hence  the  goods  he  sought  through  religion  were  the 
reflexion  of  the  wants  of  his  daily  life.  What  these  wants 
were  we  can  infer,  and  the  prayers  addressed  to  the  spirits 


106        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH    OF    RELIGION 

tell  us  directly.  "  Pity  me,"  cried  the  Redskin,  "  I  am 
very  poor ;  give  me  what  I  need ;  give  me  success  against 
my  enemies.  May  I  be  able  to  take  scalps,  to  take  horses." 
Or  again,  "  Let  me  live,  not  be  sick,  find  the  enemy  .  .  . 
kill  a  great  many  of  him."  "  Compassionate  father,"  says 
the  Papuan,  "  here  is  some  food  for  you ;  eat  it ;  be  kind 
to  us  on  account  of  it." *  Tribal  sacrifices  are  pervaded 
by  a  like  strain  of  selfish  interest.  Whether  the  sacrifice 
is  a  gift  or  an  act  of  homage  to  the  spirits,  it  is  offered  in 
the  hope  of  procuring  some  tangible  good  or  of  averting 
some  pressing  ill.  Do  ut  des,  or  do  ut  abeas :  the  worshipper 
gives  that  the  good  spirit  may  give  him  something  good,  or 
that  the  malignant  sprite  may  take  itself  off.  Tribal 
Religion  is  indeed  not  entirely  limited  to  this  selfish  and 
material  frame  of  mind,  but  it  is  deeply  penetrated  by  it. 

With  the  foregoing  aspect  of  primitive  religion  there  is 
closely  connected  its  exclusiveness.  The  conception  of  a 
religion  which  he  should  share  with  all  surrounding  tribes 
would  appear  foolish,  and  even  unmeaning,  to  the  barbarian. 
Its  gods  belong  to  the  tribe,  and  the  tribe  to  its  gods ;  and 
it  was  a  commonplace  in  early  culture,  that  to  go  among 
strange  peoples  was  to  go  among  men  who  "  served  other 
gods."  Hence  when  an  individual  was  received  by  initia- 
tion into  another  tribe,  he  became  eo  ipso  a  sharer  of  all  the 
religious  beliefs  and  practices  of  that  tribe.  The  structure 
and  character  of  tribal  religion  lends  itself  to  this  ex- 
clusiveness. Where  the  idea  prevails  that  the  god  is  the 
progenitor  or  ancestor  of  the  group,  the  religious  bond  is 
naturally  restricted  to  the  group.  Again,  it  is  not  the 
worship  of  the  greater  powers  of  nature,  which  have  a  sort 
of  physical  universality,  that  is  dominant  in  the  religion 
of  the  tribe :  it  is  the  worship  of  things  in  the  environ- 
ment, of  spirits  that  have  a  local  habitation  there,  which 
preponderates.  And  such  objects  of  reverence  are  not 
readily  shared  by  men  whose  haunts  are  elsewhere.  The 
tenacity  with  which  the  tribe  clings  to  its  religion  is 
remarkable ;  and  the  old  beliefs  and  practices  tend  to 

1  Vid.  Tylor,  Primitive,  Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  364  if. 


TRIBAL    RELIGION  107 

persist  even  amid  great  changes  in  the  environment  and 
in  the  constitution  of  society.  This  exclusiveness  must  be 
reckoned  one  of  the  intractable  elements  which  impede 
the  development  of  higher  forms  of  religion.  And  the 
forces  of  tradition,  sentiment,  and  habit  make  the  tribal 
mind  inhospitable  to  the  reception  of  fresh  religious  ideas. 

A  further  characteristic  feature  of  primitive  religion  is 
the  ill-defined  nature  of  the  beings  who  are  worshipped. 
We  cannot  speak  of  them  as  possessing  a  concrete  and 
individual  character  which  is  revealed  in  a  variety  of  attri- 
butes. At  the  best  they  remain  shadowy  and  elusive, 
known  by  exercising  certain  powers,  numina  in  the  sense 
of  the  old  Eoman  religion  rather  than  gods.  The  only 
broad  distinction  which  divides  the  spirits  is,  that  some  are 
propitious  to  men  and  others  are  malignant :  some  are  to 
be  sought,  and  others  to  be  avoided.  The  spirits  are  not 
nobler  and  better  beings  than  men,  but  they  are  more 
cunning  and  powerful.  It  is  an  interesting  problem  how 
these  vague  beings  were  recognised  and  designated  by  the 
primitive  mind.  That  each  had  its  individual  name  is  not 
credible.  The  late  Hermann  Usener's  theory,  suggested  by 
the  Roman  indigitamenta,  has  a  good  deal  in  its  favour.1 
His  view  was  that  the  spirits  were  defined  by  the  mode 
of  their  activity :  they  had  appellations  in  the  sense  of 
nomina  agentis.  In  Usener's  opinion,  the  gods  of  the 
undivided  Aryans  were  still  at  the  low  level  where  such 
modes  of  designation  sufficed.  On  the  latter  point  I  do 
not  offer  an  opinion;  but  it  seems  clear  that  the  spirits 
of  early  religion  were  too  deficient  in  individuality  to  be 
designated  otherwise  than  in  some  such  way  as  Usener  has 
suggested.  And  this  same  absence  of  individuality  in  the 
religious  object  precludes  tribal  worship  from  being  other 
than  of  the  most  rude  and  elementary  character.  There 
is  so  little  to  distinguish  one  spirit  from  another,  the  mode 
of  operation  varies  so  slightly  if  at  all,  that  there  can  be 
nothing  specific  in  the  mode  of  worship.  No  doubt  we 
find  various  rites  of  an  elaborate  nature  performed  by 

1  Gotternamen,  p.  273  ff. 


108        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

uncivilised  tribes — initiation  ceremonies  and  dances,  for 
example.  But  in  these  cases  the  significance  of  the 
ceremonies  is  magical  much  more  than  religious.  The 
strict  attention  to  detail  which  marks  primitive  ceremonial 
does  not  proceed  from  a  scrupulous  reverence  for  the  spirits, 
or  from  a  clear  sense  of  the  particular  rites  which  a  particular 
class  of  spirits  demands,  but  is  designed  to  secure  the  magical 
efficiency  of  the  rite.  The  natural  affinity  of  spiritism 
with  magic,  and  the  fascination  which  magical  ideas  exercise, 
usually  result  in  tribal  religion  becoming  penetrated  by 
magical  beliefs  and  acts.  The  result  often  is  that  the 
religion  of  the  tribe  is  overlaid  and  depressed  by  a  weight 
of  superstition,  and  lacks  any  purifying  and  uplifting  element. 
The  tribal  spirit  has  not  the  inner  strength  and  vitality  to 
react  against  and  to  free  itself  from  this  dominion :  and  the 
way  to  higher  development  has  to  be  made  by  the  breaking 
up  of  that  tribal  structure  which  had  been  so  intimately 
bound  up  with  the  early  religious  consciousness.  There 
are  no  instances  of  the  evolution  of  an  ethical  religion  by 
a  tribal  group. 

So  far  the  picture  of  primitive  religion  is  somewhat 
depressing :  it  seems  too  feeble  to  raise  man  above  the  sway 
of  crude  selfishness  or  the  tyranny  of  gloomy  fears.  The 
truth  is  that  the  tribe  is  too  narrow  and  poor  a  form  of 
social  life  to  minister  to  that  growth  of  self-conscious  mind 
which  opens  out  to  man  a  new  heaven  and  earth.  We 
may  say  that,  in  its  religion,  primitive  society  is  engrossed 
with  a  content  too  large  for  the  form  in  which  it  strives 
to  express  it.  From  this  point  of  view  the  break-up  of  the 
old  is  the  condition  of  the  rise  of  the  new  and  better :  the 
dissolution  of  the  tribe  in  a  wider  social  order  was  in  the 
end  a  means  of  liberating  the  human  spirit.  At  the  same 
time  it  would  be  wrong  to  suppose  that  early  religion  does 
not  contain  within  it  the  germs  of  something  better.  Even 
spiritism  shows  an  advance  on  rude  nature-worship  by  its 
conception  of  a  supersensuous  world  of  spirits  which  works 
through  the  world  of  sensible  things,  but  is  not  identical 
with  it.  And  if  we  look  away  from  the  colourless  beings 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  109 

who  are  reverenced  to  the  way  in  which  tribal  religion 
conceives  of  the  religious  bond,  we  can  recognise  the  germs 
of  higher  ideas.  In  encouraging  loyalty  to  the  ancestral 
spirits,  or  to  the  god  from  whom  the  tribe  is  descended, 
tribal  religion  made  for  social  solidarity  and  a  sense  of 
common  obligations.  It  is  in  a  sense  true  to  say,  as  Dr. 
Tylor  has  said,  that  "  Savage  animism  is  almost  devoid  of 
that  ethical  element  which  to  the  educated  modern  mind 
is  the  mainspring  of  practical  religion."1  But  ethical 
ideas  imply  a  personal  development  which  did  not  then 
exist  any  more  than  it  exists  in  the  child  of  tender  years. 
Nevertheless,  loyalty  to  the  custom  which  makes  for  the 
well-being  of  the  whole  is  the  root  from  which  the  ethical 
spirit  develops.  In  rudimentary  form  we  have  here  the 
idea  of  a  norm  for  human  wills  which  all  accept  for  the 
good  of  all.  Tribal  religion,  in  so  far  as  it  led  in  this 
direction,  was  subserving  the  cause  of  spiritual  progress. 
Moreover,  in  the  tribal  conception  of  a  blood-bond  uniting 
all  the  members  of  the  primitive  group,  there  appears  the 
rudimentary  basis  out  of  which  was  to  develop  the  idea  of 
the  spiritual  brotherhood  of  the  religious  society.  The  line 
of  religious  progress  lay  in  transforming  the  natural  into  a 
spiritual  relation. 

B. — NATIONAL  EELIGION. 

In  contrast  to  the  religion  of  the  tribe,  the  religion 
of  the  nation  reveals  a  very  great  enlargement  of  the 
outlook  and  a  significant  deepening  of  the  content  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  The  growth  of  the  nation  involves 
a  widening  of  man's  mental  horizon :  and  the  rise  of  a 
larger  and  more  complex  social  order  brings  about  a 
distinct  advance  in  the  personal  consciousness.  Through 
interaction  with  other  selves  within  a  wider  social  system, 
man  makes  progress  in  individuality  and  knowledge  of 
himself.  One  important  consequence  is  that  religion 
transcends  the  old  naturalistic  limitations,  and  gains  in 
1  Op.  cit.  vol.  ii.  p.  360. 


110        BEGINNINGS   AND    GROWTH    OF   RELIGION 

ethical  character.     Our  first  task  will  be  to  indicate  the 
nature  of 

(a)   The  Transition  from  Tribal  to  National  Religion. 

We  have  already  noted  the  limitations  of  tribal  society. 
The  tribe  represented  a  narrow  form  of  social  order,  and 
its  isolation  cut  it  off  to  a  large  extent  from  stimuli  to 
development.  The  tribal  life  was  for  the  most  part  a 
hard  and  constant  struggle  for  existence  against  an  in- 
hospitable nature  and  hostile  social  groups.  The  material 
basis  of  life  was  too  slender  and  its  organisation  too 
precarious  to  afford  an  opportunity  of  cultivating  the 
higher  faculties.  It  is  true,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  that 
man  has  to  gain  a  stable  means  of  subsistence  which 
delivers  him  from  the  fear  of  immediate  want,  ere  he 
has  leisure  to  reflect  on  things  and  create  philosophy. 
The  observation  has  a  bearing  on  religion  as  well.  If  man 
in  the  lowest  savagery  has  some  sort  of  religion,  it  is  only 
on  the  civilised  level  that  an  ethical  and  reflective  religion 
can  develop.  So  long  as  man  lives  from  hand  to  mouth, 
his  religion  must  be  fitful  and  interrupted,  a  matter  for  a 
special  occasion  rather  than  a  constant  attitude.  Man 
must  improve  the  material  conditions  of  existence  before 
spiritual  development  can  ensue ;  and  this  was  hardly 
possible  under  the  conditions  of  tribal  life. 

Man  at  the  primitive  stage  lived  by  hunting  and 
fishing,  and  on  such  wild  fruits  as  he  could  gather.  An 
important  advance  was  made  when  he  learned  to  tame  and 
domesticate  the  wild  animals,  and  to  use  them  for  a  means 
of  subsistence.  Life  was  less  precarious  to  peoples  at  the 
nomadic  stage  than  to  primitive  tribes ;  yet  nomadic  races 
required  large  spaces  in  which  to  roam  with  their  herds, 
and  their  circumstances  were  not  favourable  to  the 
development  of  a  stable  and  complex  social  order.  But 
the  form  of  life  favoured  a  simple  and  well-defined  type 
of  religion,  such  as  we  find  among  the  early  Semites  and 
Persians.  Under  these  conditions  it  was  natural  for  men 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  111 

to  regard  as  sacred  the  animals  upon  which  they  depended 
for  their  subsistence.1  Yet  society  had  to  pass  from  the 
nomadic  to  the  agricultural  stage  before  the  elements  of 
civilisation  could  freely  develop,  and  forms  of  social  union 
ministering  to  a  higher  kind  of  life  maintain  themselves. 
When  man  learned  to  cultivate  the  ground  and  to  draw 
his  food  supply  from  it,  he  secured  a  stable  and  plentiful 
means  of  support,  and  this  made  possible  a  denser 
population  and  a  more  highly  organised  society.  Above 
all,  he  was  delivered  from  that  absorption  in  the  needs  of 
the  immediate  present  which  precluded  the  rise  of  the 
reflective  spirit.  With  the  emergence  of  the  city  and  the 
civic  order  on  earth  man  came  into  his  proper  kingdom, 
and  achieved  the  fruition  of  his  higher  faculties.  He 
could  now  reveal  himself  as  a  being  of  "  large  discourse," 
who  was  able  to  look  before  and  after,  and  to  consider 
the  meaning  and  purpose  of  his  life  as  a  whole.  This 
advance  could  not  but  have  significant  consequences  for 
religion. 

How  it  was  that  a  number  of  tribes  or  clans  became 
fused  together  to  form  a  nation,  we  do  not  learn  from 
direct  observation ;  but  we  can  infer  with  some  degree  of 
certainty  the  process  by  which  it  came  about.  The  con- 
servative instincts  and  self-centred  tendencies  of  early 
groups  were  too  strong  to  admit  of  a  spontaneous 
unification ;  but  what  natural  affinity  could  not  accomplish, 
external  necessity  achieved.  Neighbouring  tribes  would 
sometimes  be  forced  to  combine  to  avert  destruction  at 
the  hands  of  a  common  enemy.  More  often  probably  a 
strong  and  vigorous  tribe  extended  its  bounds  and 
imposed  its  rule  on  adjacent  tribes.  And  what  was  at 
first  a  loose  federation  of  groups  under  a  dominating 
group  would  gradually  be  consolidated  by  pressure  from 
without.  An  order,  in  the  first  instance,  superimposed  on 
the  units,  was  by  and  by  freely  accepted  and  developed 
from  within ;  and  so  the  nation  came  into  being.  The 
evolution  of  a  nation  out  of  a  variety  of  tribal  elements  is 

1  Of.  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  296  ff. 


112        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH    OF   RELIGION 

well  illustrated  by  ancient  Egypt  and  by  Eome.  The 
growth  of  the  nation  meant  a  large  expansion  of  human 
interests,  a  greatly  increased  differentiation  of  functions, 
and  a  corresponding  development  of  the  individual 
consciousness.  The  regulation  of  life  by  immemorial 
custom  became  inadequate  and  was  superseded  by  law: 
the  primitive  habit  of  blood-revenge  was  replaced  by  judicial 
punishment :  traditional  usages  yielded  to  organised  institu- 
tions. How  fared  it  with  religion  in  this  process  of  social 
transformation  ?  A  fresh  religion,  it  is  certain,  did  not 
and  could  not  issue  into  sudden  birth  like  Athene  spring- 
ing from  the  head  of  Zeus.  The  process  of  change  was 
gradual.  The  instinct  of  the  tribe  was  to  cling  to  its  old 
religion  in  the  midst  of  the  new  social  order.  The  power 
of  tradition  in  religion  is  marked,  and  the  tribal  cults 
would  tend  to  maintain  themselves  as  long  as  the  clan 
or  group  had  a  recognisable  existence  within  the  nation. 
Even  when  the  outlines  of  the  original  group  had  faded 
and  become  lost,  it  would  leave  behind  it  a  legacy  of 
religious  beliefs  and  usages  which  persisted  in  the  minds 
of  the  common  people  long  after  their  original  source  had 
been  forgotten.  Nevertheless,  when  a  number  of  cults 
were  set  alongside  each  other,  a  process  of  assimilation 
and  blending  must  have  taken  place ;  and  the  god  of  a 
conquering  tribe  would  naturally  claim  allegiance  from 
those  who  had  been  subdued.  The  victorious  career  of 
the  tribe  was  itself  a  testimony  that  it  possessed  a 
greater  and  better  god  than  its  neighbours.  At  the 
same  time  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  main  influence 
at  work  in  creating  a  national  religion  was  a  growing 
national  consciousness,  which  carried  with  it  new  and 
larger  needs  and  aspirations.  National  ends  and  values 
could  find  no  suitable  and  adequate  expression  through 
tribal  cults,  crude  in  their  nature  and  local  in  their  scope 
and  purpose.  New  wine  must  be  put  into  new  bottles, 
and  the  nation  had  to  create  for  itself  a  form  of  religion 
sufficient  for  its  wants.  These  wants  the  old  Animism 
and  Spiritism  were  powerless  to  supply :  the  call  was  for 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  113 

gods  of  a  more  individual  character  and  a  more  extended 
dominion.  Now  imagination  could  not  conjure  up  fresh 
deities  from  the  void  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  situation. 
A  religion  so  obviously  artificial  would  have  had  no  chance 
of  surviving.  There  is  no  true  development  without 
continuity  between  the  new  and  the  old ;  and  if  religion 
was  to  maintain  its  influence,  its  higher  forms  had  to 
grow  out  of  the  lower.  This  condition  was  most  readily 
fulfilled  by  the  creation  of  a  polytheistic  system  on  the 
basis  of  the  greater  nature-worship.  The  reverence  of 
the  greater  powers  of  nature  had  formerly  played  a  part, 
if  not  a  dominant  part,  in  tribal  religion ;  and  in  the 
earlier  worship  of  sun  and  moon,  fire,  wind,  and  water, 
the  rude  types  for  higher  deities  already  existed.  In 
developing  its  great  gods  on  this  basis  the  nation  at  once 
maintained  a  continuity  with  older  religion,  and  at  the 
same  time  secured  objects  of  reverence  which  could  be 
adapted  to  its  enlarged  desires  and  purposes.  For  there 
was  a  physical  universality  in  the  objects  selected  which 
made  it  impossible  that  any  group  or  section  of  the 
people  should  claim  an  exclusive  right  in  them,  and 
made  it  possible  for  all  to  worship  them. 

That  development  did  take  place  on  these  lines  is 
sufficiently  attested  by  the  polytheistic  systems  of  the 
greater  nations  of  antiquity.  We  cannot  always  determine 
the  precise  naturalistic  origin  of  a  national  deity,  but 
sometimes  we  can  do  so.  For  example,  it  is  clear  that 
the  Vedic  Agni  is  a  fire-god  and  the  Persian  Ahura  a 
light-god.  The  Babylonian  Marduk  and  the  Egyptian  Ea 
are  sun-gods;  the  Greek  Zeus  and  the  Latin  Jupiter  are 
heaven-gods :  the  Germanic  Odin  and  the  Vedic  Indra 
are  storm-gods.  In  these  cases  the  naturalistic  basis 
served  as  a  nucleus  around  which  religious  imagination 
wove  the  outlines  of  a  personality.  It  is  not,  however, 
true  that  every  god  whose  character  reveals  a  connexion 
with  some  aspect  of  nature  started  on  his  career  in  the 
possession  of  this  feature.  The  lineage  of  a  god  may 
go  back  to  a  point  prior  to  his  association  with  a  certain 
8 


114        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

phenomenon  of  nature,  although  this  subsequent  association 
became  a  means  of  extending  his  dominion  and  influence. 

The  process  by  which  a  god  acquires  new  attributes 
is  an  important  aspect  of  religious  development.  An 
explanation  of  this  amplification  may  be  found  in  the 
fusion  of  local  cults  with  a  central  cult ;  for  in  this  case 
certain  of  the  qualities  of  the  lesser  deities  are  taken  over 
by  the  greater  god.  Some  of  the  Egyptian  gods  who 
assumed* a  solar  character  were  originally  local  gods  not 
connected  with  the  sun ;  but  they  came  to  acquire  this 
connexion,  and  it  enabled  them  to  exercise  wider  functions. 
Similarly  it  was  at  a  later  period  in  his  history  that  the 
Greek  Apollo  was  identified  with  Helios ;  and  if  we 
accept  Dr.  Farnell's  conclusions,  his  primary  character 
is  obscure  and  hard  to  determine.  In  like  manner  the 
connexion  of  Artemis  with  the  moon  is  secondary ;  she 
is  primarily  a  goddess  of  the  wild  life  of  nature.  But 
the  fact  is,  that  the  materials  are  lacking  whereby  to 
trace  in  detail  the  ancestry  and  history  of  the  gods  of 
polytheism.  Many  of  them  seem  to  have  been  local  gods 
— gods  of  a  conquering  group  or  city — ere  they  came  to 
reign  over  wider  kingdoms.  Examples  of  the  movement 
by  which  a  god  begins  with  a  little  domain  and  ends 
with  a  great  empire  are  Marduk  the  god  of  Babylon,  Ra 
the  sun-god  of  Heliopolis,  and  Amon-Ra  the  god  of 
Thebes,  the  city  which  took  the  lead  in  the  expulsion  of 
the  Hyksos.  A  classical  and  familiar  instance  is  Athene, 
the  maiden  goddess  of  Athens,  who  developed  with  her 
city  and  became  the  embodiment  of  its  power  and  prestige. 
It  is  perhaps  well  to  add  that,  while  many  of  the  gods 
of  national  polytheism  have  a  naturalistic  basis,  it  is 
not  so  in  every  case.  The  most  conspicuous  example  of 
a  god  who  was  never  connected  with  the  processes  of 
nature  is  Brahma,  who  grew  out  of  the  cult  and  represented 
the  all-availing  might  of  the  sacrificial  prayer.  And  it 
is  at  least  possible  that  Aphrodite  as  well  as  Astarte 
from  the  first  did  not  represent  a  natural  process,  but  an 
aspect  of  human  life :  they  are  deifications  of  sensuous 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  115 

love.1  The  Greek  Hestia,  with  her  counterpart  the  Koman 
Vesta,  the  goddess  of  the  hearth-fire,  is  from  the  outset 
a  family  or  a  civic  deity  rather  than  a  natural  power. 
It  will  be  noted,  however,  that  in  such  cases  it  is  no 
local  object  which  is  elevated  to  a  god :  it  is  something 
which  is  capable  of  being  regarded  in  a  general  aspect, 
or  which  has  a  universal  function. 

When  a  nation  is  a  closely  unified  whole,  its  religion 
will  tend  to  be  centralised  and  to  wear  a  common  character. 
The  more  rigorously  the  unity  of  the  people  is  asserted, 
the  greater  will  be  the  stress  on  uniformity  of  worship. 
National  life,  as  it  appeared  among  the  Greek  city-states 
or  the  Germanic  races,  was  that  of  a  loose  federation  of 
peoples.  In  consequence  we  seldom  find  that  exactly 
the  same  gods  are  worshipped  by  the  different  groups, 
or  that  the  same  god  has  everywhere  the  same  importance. 
In  marked  contrast  are  religions  of  the  highly  centralised 
type,  which  aim  at  a  common  system  of  belief  and  worship. 
Illustrations  of  this  drawn  from  widely  separate  fields  are 
the  religion  of  the  Incas  of  Peru  and  the  religion  of  post- 
exilic  Judaism.  Whether  a  national  religion  assumes  the 
looser  or  the  stricter  form  will  depend  much  on  social 
and  political  conditions.  To  some  extent  it  will  also 
depend  on  the  intrinsic  character  of  the  religion  itself : 
monotheism,  for  instance,  will  naturally  tend  towards 
unification  of  worship. 

(b)  The  Specific  Features  of  National  Eeligion. 

The  special  characteristics  which  distinguish  National 
from  Tribal  Keligion  may  be  traced  to  the  higher  social 
order  of  the  nation  and  the  needs  which  flow  from  it. 
The  savage  can  worship  the  vague  and  formless  spirits : 
the  civilised  man  demands  some  better  object  of  reverence. 

1  That  Aphrodite  was  of  Asiatic,  not  of  Hellenic  origin,  is  likely.  Dr. 
Farnell  suggests,  with  what  probability  I  cannot  say,  that  she  came  to 
Greece  from  Asia  with  the  character  of  a  deity  of  vegetation.  Cults  of  the 
Greek  States,  vol.  ii.  p.  624. 


116        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

The  increased  individuality  and  the  fuller  sense  of  personal 
character  which  are  developed  by  interaction  among  the 
members  of  a  civilised  society  make  it  hard  for  them  to 
bow  down  before  beings  poorer  and  meaner  than  them- 
selves. Hence  the  tendency  which  accompanies  the 
evolution  of  the  nation  to  humanise  and  moralise  the 
gods,  and  to  bring  them  into  close  relation  with  the  various 
aspects  of  the  national  life.  As  already  noted,  the  evolution 
of  society  means  an  increased  differentiation  of  functions 
within  the  social  whole;  and  the  activities  of  men  fall 
into  broadly  marked  departments,  with  the  consequent 
division  of  the  population  into  classes.  Compared  with 
the  relative  homogeneousness  of  tribal  society,  national 
life  is  complex:  some  of  the  people  are  devoted  to 
agriculture  and  others  to  trade,  a  certain  section  is  occupied 
with  the  administration  of  justice,  another  with  the  conduct 
of  war,  and  a  third  with  religion.  Hence  through  the 
development  of  the  State  great  interests  grow  up  which 
are  the  intimate  concern  of  the  citizens  ;  and  these  interests 
represent  social  values  of  far-reaching  influence  and  im- 
portance. So  provision  must  be  made  for  their  due 
recognition  in  the  religious  life  of  the  State.  This  provision 
was  not  not  made  by  creating  new  gods,  save  in  special 
instances,  but  by  extending  the  powers  of  older  gods  and 
by  attributing  to  them  fresh  functions.  This  process  is 
exceedingly  common  at  the  stage  of  development  with  which 
we  are  now  dealing,  and  some  illustrations  of  it  will  be 
given  afterwards.  Meanwhile  note  that,  in  virtue  of  this 
process,  the  god  acquires  additional  predicates,  his  character 
grows  more  complex,  and  his  nature  becomes  more  in- 
dividualised. This  work  of  representing  a  being  with  a 
character  revealed  in  a  variety  of  attributes  transcended 
the  limits  of  the  primitive  mind :  it  was  made  possible 
by  the  higher  mental  faculties  of  the  civilised  man,  who 
gave  his  god  a  name  and  was  able  to  combine  a  diversity 
of  qualities  in  the  unity  of  a  single  idea.  Provided  with 
a  name,  endowed  with  a  variety  of  attributes  and  offices, 
and  possessing  something  of  a  personal  character,  the 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  117 

national  god  was  a  power  between  whom  and  his  wor- 
shippers personal  relations  could  exist. 

One  can  see  that  the  growing  complexity  of  human 
activities  in  the  nation  might  tend  to  multiply  the  number 
of  gods,  each  with  a  specific  duty  to  fulfil.  The  old  Roman 
religion  was  an  instance  in  which  this  tendency  received 
very  full  expression  ;  but  the  needs  of  worship  were  hostile 
to  the  indefinite  multiplication  of  deities,  and  the  religion 
of  the  nation  more  often  shows  a  counter  movement 
towards  integration.  The  result  then  is,  that  the  minor 
gods  fall  into  the  background,  and  the  great  departments 
of  the  national  life  are  brought  under  the  guardianship 
of  a  few  great  gods,  who  preside  over  them  and  become 
the  protectors  of  those  engaged  in  them.  In  this  process 
of  expansion,  through  which  a  god  adds  fresh  aspects  to 
his  nature  and  rules  over  new  kingdoms,  his  original 
character  as  a  nature  god  is  so  overlaid,  that  it  is  some- 
times almost,  if  not  entirely,  obliterated.  We  can  by  no 
means  assume  that  the  feature  which  has  come  to  be 
most  widely  associated  with  a  deity  gives  us  the  clue  to 
his  primitive  nature.  Indeed  it  is  easy  to  see  that  if 
the  naturalistic  origin  of  a  god  is  transcended,  if  the 
basis  as  a  nature  power  is  transmuted  into  something 
higher  and  its  cruder  features  left  behind,  the  god  is 
best  qualified  to  play  a  distinguished  role  in  the  national 
pantheon.  Hence  it  was  just  because  the  natural  founda- 
tion of  the  old  Heaven-god  and  Earth-goddess  was  too 
pronounced  to  be  lost  sight  of,  that  they  failed  to 
play  an  effective  part  in  national  polytheism.  Dyaus 
and  Prithivi,  Ouranos  and  Gaia,  Qeb  and  Nut  are  dim 
figures  who  remain  steadily  behind  the  scenes  in  the 
Hindu,  Greek,  and  Egyptian  world  of  gods.  They  never 
became  fully  personal  beings,  recognised  and  worshipped 
as  such. 

Let  me  illustrate  briefly  the  development  of  the 
character  of  a  god  under  the  stimulus  of  the  religious 
needs  of  a  people.  Varuna  is  one  of  the  greatest  gods  of 
the  Veda.  He  originally  stood  in  close  relation  to  nature, 


118        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

and  it  is  a  tempting  hypothesis  that  at  first  he  represented 
the  luminous  heaven.  In  the  Vedic  Hymns  he  has  become 
an  all-seeing  personality,  the  founder  of  the  moral  order 
of  the  world,  and  prayers  are  addressed  to  him  as  just 
and  good  and  gracious.  "  He  who  should  flee  higher  than 
the  heaven,  even  though  he  went  beyond  the  end  of  the 
world,  he  would  not  escape  King  Varuna."  "  All  things 
sees  King  Varuna  which  are  between  the  heaven  and  the 
earth  beyond."  The  Teutonic  Odin  or  Wodan  was 
originally  a  wind  or  storm  god,  and  the  memory  of  his 
primitive  character  is  preserved  in  the  legend  of  "The 
Wild  Hunt."  But  he  gradually  gained  higher  attributes. 
In  the  Eddas  he  has  become  the  chief  god  of  a  warrior 
race,  and  is  termed  the  patron  of  war.  He  also  became 
the  protector  of  agriculture  and  the  ancestor  of  races. 
Moreover,  in  the  north  he  assumed  the  role  of  a  culture 
hero  and  the  god  of  poesy ;  and  he  was  also  believed  to 
rule  in  the  kingdom  of  the  dead.  Odin  is  a  good  illustra- 
tion of  a  great  god  who  has  assumed  various  functions  in 
response  to  the  development  of  his  worshippers.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  the  Greek  Apollo.  Possibly  at  first 
a  light-god,  he  was  afterwards  associated  with  Helios,  and 
was  ultimately  linked  with  very  different  aspects  of  the 
people's  life.  At  an  early  date  he  was  the  god  of  agricul- 
ture, vegetation,  and  cattle  rearing  (z/o/uo?);  and  at  a 
later  time  he  was  known  as  the  god  of  song,  music,  and 
poesy.  The  arts  of  divination  and  healing  were  likewise 
put  under  his  protection.  In  art  he  came  to  be  the 
embodiment  of  the  Greek  conception  of  strength  and 
manly  beauty  of  form.  Mars  is  one  of  the  oldest  deities 
of  Roman  religion,  and  his  name  occurs  in  a  primitive 
hymn  of  the  Arval  brothers.  Prime vally  perhaps  a  god 
of  spring  and  fertility,  he  assumed  the  protection  of 
vegetation,  herds,  and  men,  and  was  honoured  for  warding 
off  plagues  and  sickness.  At  a  later  time,  when  the 
military  side  of  Roman  life  had  developed,  Mars  became 
the  god  of  war,  and  in  this  capacity  he  is  familiar  to  us 
in  Roman  literature.  To  take  yet  another  example :  the 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  119 

Egyptian  Osiris,  the  god  of  Abydos,  is  one  of  those  deities 
whose  original  form  has  been  so  overwritten  with  legend 
and  theological  construction,  that  it  is  hardly  recognisable. 
Some  have  thought  he  was  at  first  a  god  of  vegetation ; 
others,  with  more  likelihood,  have  suggested  that  he 
represented  the  sun  after  his  setting.  At  all  events  he 
was  afterwards  made  to  reign  over  the  kingdom  of  the 
dead,  and  was  exalted  to  a  moral  power  who  ruled  for  good. 
These  illustrations  may  suffice  to  indicate  the  process 
which  the  student  of  religion  finds  at  work  in  the  domain  of 
national  religion.  The  gods  slowly  part  with  their  natural- 
istic features  as  the  indomitable  spirit  of  man  triumphs  over 
nature,  and  they  gradually  acquire  a  higher  content  from 
the  values  which  are  being  realised  in  the  national  life. 

The  demands  of  the  cultus,  as  well  as  the  growth  of 
reflexion,  prompted  thought  to  carry  out  the  analogy  of 
the  social  order  in  the  religious  sphere,  and  to  bring  about 
a  coherent  and  graduated  order  among  the  gods  of  the 
nation.  It  is  hard  to  suppose  that  a  heavenly  any  more 
than  an  earthly  state  can  be  well  ruled  by  a  number  of 
rival  and  independent  powers  : 

of>K  &ya.Qbv  TroXvKoipavlrj*  eh  Koipavos  fora.1 

The  experience  of  earth  suggests  a  divine  hierarchy  in 
heaven.  The  Chinese  religion  illustrates  how  different 
religious  elements  may,  in  response  to  this  demand,  be 
included  and  ranked  within  a  system.  Supreme  over  all 
is  the  God  of  Heaven ;  but  the  Heaven  God  has  a  vice- 
regent  on  earth,  the  Emperor,  who  is  the  Son  of  Heaven. 
Under  the  Emperor  are  placed  all  the  gods  of  earth — 
the  State  gods,  the  spirits  of  ancestors,  and  the  gods  of  the 
soil  and  crops.  In  this  way  each  kind  of  deity  finds  its 
station  and  order  in  a  comprehensive  system  of  which  the 
head  is  the  Emperor,  the  Son  of  Heaven,  and  the  visible 
centre  of  divine  power.  And  what  we  find  in  China  we 
find  elsewhere.  A  simple  step  towards  the  organisation 
of  the  national  pantheon  was  to  bring  all  the  Gods  under 

1  Iliad,  ii.  204. 


120        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

the  sway  of  a  supreme  god,  who  occupied  a  place  analogous 
to  that  of  a  human  monarch.  This  conception,  which  it 
is  usual  to  term  Monarchianisin,  can  be  observed  more  or 
less  distinctly  in  several  religions.  An  example  is  the 
place  of  Zeus  in  Homeric  religion,  the  ruler  of  gods  and 
men  who  inflexibly  brings  his  counsel  to  pass — Aios  8' 
eVeXe/ero  fiovXij.  A  feebler  counterpart  of  Zeus  is  the 
Capitoline  Jupiter  of  the  Koman  State  religion.  A  far 
more  striking  and  well-marked  type  of  Monarchianism  is 
seen  in  the  religion  of  Israel  at  a  certain  point  in  its 
development.  To  the  eye  of  the  pious  Hebrew,  Jahveh  is 
"  exalted  far  above  all  gods  " ;  "  There  is  none  like  unto 
thee  among  the  gods,  0  Lord."  Israel  is  the  most  im- 
pressive illustration  of  the  movement  which  carries  out 
Monarchianism  to  its  goal  and  completion  in  a  mono- 
theistic faith.  The  strongly  marked  sense  of  the  sublimity 
of  Jahveh,  the  clear  conception  of  his  righteousness  in 
contrast  with  human  sin,  and  the  idea  that  religion  rested 
on  a  covenant  between  the  nation  and  its  God, — all  these 
elements  working  together  in  the  religion  of  Israel 
precluded  it  from  issuing  in  pantheism.  Hebrew  religion 
took  a  decided  step  towards  universalism  when,  as  the 
outcome  of  the  prophetic  spirit  at  work  within  it,  it 
developed  a  pure  Monotheism  which  left  no  room  even 
for  the  existence  of  other  gods.  In  the  heavens  and  in 
the  earth,  Jahveh  reigns  alone  and  supreme:  "All  the 
gods  of  the  peoples  are  idols;  but  Jahveh  made  the 
heavens."  The  supremacy  of  a  single  god  reaches  its  true 
conclusion  in  the  thought  that  there  is  no  god  but  the 
one  God. 

The  tendency  to  unification,  however,  sometimes  pro- 
ceeds on  another  principle  and  has  a  different  outcome. 
Instead  of  selecting  one  god  for  exclusive  reverence, 
thought  may  recognise  a  divine  principle  working  in 
and  through  the  world  of  gods.  Wo  recall  the  Greek 
TO  Oelov,  and  the  all-embracing  Molpa  or  destiny,  to 
which  the  gods  themselves  must  submit.  In  China  there 
appears  the  idea  of  Tao,  the  soul  of  heaven  existing 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  121 

before  all  gods  and  men,  the  all-governing  way  which  is 
fulfilled  by  the  steady  movement  of  the  orbs  above  and 
by  the  orderly  walk  of  mortals  below.  In  a  like  fashion 
the  Hindu  of  the  Vedic  period  saw  behind  the  natural, 
moral,  and  religious  order  the  ever-present  "  Rita,"  the 
principle  of  law  which  bound  all  things  together.  But 
the  movement  towards  unification  comes  to  more  distinct 
utterance  in  what  has  been  called  the  Kathenotheism  of 
the  Vedic  Hymns.  This  term  signifies  that,  in  the  act  of 
worship,  one  god  is  supreme  to  the  worshipper,  and  is 
invested  with  the  highest  attributes.  In  the  Vedic  Hymns, 
Agni,  Varuna,  and  Indra  are  each  in  turn  exalted  to  the 
highest  station.  At  a  further  stage  of  the  same  thought 
the  many  gods  are  recognised  to  be  only  the  shifting  forms 
of  the  one  and  real  divinity.  Already  in  the  Vedic  period 
the  Hindu  mind  was  beginning  to  realise  that  "  The 
one  remains,  the  many  change  and  pass " ;  and  the  pro- 
cess which  by  and  by  created  the  pantheistic  speculation 
of  the  Upanishads,  and  issued  in  the  strict  pantheism  of 
the  Vedanta,  had  already  entered  on  its  course.  That 
course  is  continuous  throughout.  A  parallel  tendency  is 
disclosed  in  the  ancient  religion  of  Egypt.  Here  also  we 
see  one  god  exalted  in  worship  to  be  highest  and  best, 
and  other  divine  forms  grow  faint  and  unsubstantial. 
Amon-Ra  is  thus  invoked :  "  Hail  to  thee,  maker  of  all 
beings,  lord  of  law,  father  of  the  gods,  .  .  .  single  among 
the  gods,  of  many  names,  unknown  in  their  number." 
Polytheism  was  too  firmly  rooted  in  the  local  cults  to 
make  the  evolution  of  Monotheism  practicable  in  Egypt. 
But  in  the  esoteric  doctrine  of  the  priests,  Henotheism 
was  developed  in  the  direction  of  a  pantheistic  world- 
view.  In  contrast  to  Monotheism,  Pantheism  offers  a 
solution  of  the  religious  problem  which  leaves  no  room 
for  a  genuine  religious  bond ;  and  this  because  the 
difference  of  worshipper  and  worshipped  is  resolved 
into  the  colourless  identity  of  the  one  real  Being.  The 
sole  office  of  religion  in  a  pantheistic  system  would  be 
to  lift  the  veil  of  illusion,  under  which  the  individual 


122        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH    OF    RELIGION 

cherishes  the   belief  that  he  has  a  being  and  destiny  of 
his  own. 

The  diverse  and  sometimes  conflicting  elements  which 
are  at  work  in  the  life  of  a  nation,  as  well  as  the  genius 
of  the  people  as  a  whole,  are  mirrored  in  the  national 
religion.  The  temperament  of  a  race  and  the  interests 
which  dominate  it,  are  necessarily  reflected  in  the 
character  of  its  gods  and  the  spirit  of  its  worship.  For 
the  gods  are  the  protectors  of  the  manifold  activities  of 
the  citizens  and  the  guardians  of  their  fortunes.  Especially 
when  the  national  spirit  has  come  to  the  full  consciousness 
of  itself,  and  religion  is  centralised  in  the  cults  of  the 
state,  do  we  read  in  the  religion  of  the  nation  the  moving 
forces  of  its  history.  The  Hindu  religion  reflects  the 
rnind  of  the  patient  inhabitants  of  a  tropical  land,  who 
revolt  against  a  loud  and  aggressive  individualism  and 
turn  to  thought  for  satisfaction.  The  slender  sense  of 
personality  has  made  possible  the  fusion  of  all  forms 
human  and  divine  in  the  universal  Brahma:  "Thou  art 
that " :  to  know  this  truth  is  to  be  delivered  from 
illusion.  In  the  Bhagavadyita  the  Deity  tells  Arguna, 
hesitating  to  join  battle,  that  "  He  who  thinks  one  to  be 
the  killer  and  he  who  thinks  one  to  be  killed,  both  know 
nothing.  He  kills  not,  is  not  killed.  He  is  not  born  nor 
does  he  ever  die,  nor  having  existed  does  he  exist  no 
more." 1  The  Hellenic  religion  is  the  reflexion  of  a  temper 
and  ideals  which  are  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  Hindu. 
The  clear-cut  figures  of  the  Greek  gods  and  goddesses 
resisted  the  process  of  blending  in  a  pantheistic  whole : 
and  the  fair  and  graceful  forms  they  received  at  the  hands 
of  the  great  artists  are  the  expression  of  that  order, 
measure,  and  harmony  in  which  the  Greek  saw  the 
fruition  of  individuality.  When  we  turn  to  the  Koman 
world  we  find  a  temper  more  secular  and  less  idealistic, 
and  it  is  reflected  to  the  full  in  the  Roman  religion. 
With  some  truth  Hegel  described  the  Eoman  religion  as 
the  religion  of  Ziueckmassigkeit,  or  expediency ;  and  the 

1  Telang's  translation  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East. 


NATIONAL   RELIGION  123 

note  of  Roman  piety  was  the  giving  of  the  gods  their 
due.1  The  gods  are  mysterious  powers  to  be  dealt  with 
by  fixed  rules,  rather  than  personal  beings  who  claim 
the  devotion  of  man.  Indeed,  we  might  say  that  the 
Roman  gods  remain  shadowy  and  abstract  to  the  end, 
because  the  true  divinity  was  on  earth,  not  in  heaven.  It 
was  the  conquering  power  and  the  imperial  destiny  of 
Rome  herself ;  and  of  this  the  figure  of  Jupiter  Optimus 
Maximus,  guarding  the  Capitol,  was  the  symbol. 

It  may  be  useful  if  we  summarise  briefly  the  main 
features  of  religion  at  the  national  stage. 

(1)  In  contrast  to  the  gods  of  tribal  religion,  the  gods 
of  the  nation  have  a  name  and  a  character,  and  they  are 
endowed  with  a  variety  of  attributes  and  functions.     The 
realisation  of  religion  in  the  form  of  a  personal  relation 
between    worshipper  and    worshipped    now    begins  to    be 
possible. 

(2)  The  growth  of  human  character  in  civilised  life 
leads  to  the  acquirement  of  the  moral  virtues,  and  these 
are    now    ascribed    to    the    gods.     Judged    by    our    own 
standards,  the  gods  of  the  nation  are  often  not  all  that  we 
could  wish  them  to  be,  but  they  are  certainly  better  than 
their  distant   ancestors    were.2     While  the    gods    at  this 
stage  are  humanised,  they  are  also  idealised :  they  come  to 
be  represented  as  types  of  human  excellence, — of  valour, 
wisdom,  or  beneficence.     So  the  national  values  and  ideals 
are  expressed  in  the  gods  of  the  nation,  and  the  character' 
of  the  gods  gives  us  a  clue  to  the  character  of  the  citizens. 

(3)  Along    with  the  idealisation  of    the  gods  of    the 
nation  goes  the  tendency  to  elevate  them  above  the  world. 
They  become  less  familiar  beings,  and  more  the  objects  of 

lEst  enim  pietas  justitia  adversus  deos  (Cicero,  De  Nat.  Deorum). 
Mommsen  has  described  the  Koraan  attitude  to  the  gods  as  that  of  a  debtor 
to  a  powerful  creditor. 

2  In  his  Making  of  Religion  (p.  163),  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  says  the  gods 
more  often  deteriorate  than  improve  with  the  advance  of  civilisation.  The 
evidences  do  not  bear  out  this  sweeping  assertion  ;  and  it  is  connected  with 
the  untenable  idea  that,  in  the  beginnings  of  religion,  a  relatively  pure 
monotheism  prevailed. 


124        BEGINNINGS   AND    GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

reverence :  they  are  no  longer  entangled  with  the  things 
of  earth,  but  dwell  in  a  higher  region.  The  greater  gods 
of  Greece  haunt  no  more  the  groves  and  trees  and  springs : 
they  dwell  apart  and  afar  on  the  summit  of  cloud-capped 
Olympus.  The  God  of  the  Hebrew  patriarchs  who  walked 
the  earth  and  talked  with  men,  to  the  nation  in  later  days 
was  a  Being  far  exalted  above  the  world,  a  sublime 
Presence  before  whom  the  nations  were  as  nothing.  In 
this  elevation  of  the  national  gods  above  the  region  of 
sensible  experience,  we  recognise  the  endeavour  to  make 
the  form  of  the  religious  object  adequate  to  the  growing 
content  of  the  spiritual  life.  And  it  was  because  national 
polytheism  was  inadequate  in  its  forms  to  man's  deepening 
needs,  that  it  had  to  give  way  in  turn  to  a  higher  faith. 
The  religious  spirit,  when  it  grows  more  profoundly 
conscious  of  itself,  transcends  the  limits  of  the  nation  and 
becomes  universal  in  its  meaning  and  claims. 


(c)  Sacred  Things,  Acts,  and  Persons. 

Tribal  religion  in  its  essence  is  local.  The  spirits, 
whether  bound  or  free-moving,  operate  through  objects 
in  man's  environment,  and  are  approached  by  means  of 
these  objects.  The  development  of  national  religion  is  a 
process  in  which  the  connexion  of  the  gods  with  nature 
is  gradually  loosened.  Tradition  and  sentiment  are 
•nevertheless  too  strong  to  permit  of  the  local  element  in 
religion  being  speedily  discarded ;  and  the  tendency  is  to 
elevate  it  in  order  to  bring  it  into  accord  with  larger  ideas. 
The  purification  of  local  religion  is  made  practicable 
through  the  idea  of  symbol.  The  tree  once  itself  divine, 
or  at  least  the  abode  of  a  spirit,  is  by  and  by  regarded 
as  sacred  to  some  greater  god.  One  recalls  the  oak  of 
Dodona  sacred  to  Zeus,  but  which  in  a  primitive  age  was 
the  abode  of  a  tree-spirit.  The  trunk  of  a  tree  or  a  pole 
fixed  in  the  earth  beside  the  altar  or  shrine  of  the  god — 
such  as  occurred  so  often  in  the  religion  of  the  Canaanites 
— is  a  symbol  of  the  deity  and  also  the  memorial  of  an 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  125 

older  and  a  cruder  faith.  Similarly  the  rough  stone 
planted  on  a  "  high  place,"  and  itself  in  an  earlier  age  an 
object  of  reverence,  is  conceived  to  be  the  token  of  the 
divine  presence ;  and  the  place  where  it  stands  is  thought 
to  be  consecrated  for  the  meeting  ground  of  the  people 
and  their  god.  From  the  rough  stone  with  its  hallowed 
associations  was  developed  the  rudely  hewn  image,  and 
this  in  turn  gave  place  to  the  carefully  made  idol. 
Corresponding  to  the  development  of  the  idol  was  that  of 
the  temple  or  house  dedicated  to  the  worship  of  the  god. 
The  sacred  spots,  the  groves  or  the  high  places  where  men 
were  wont  to  worship,  were  by  and  by  provided  with 
shrines  in  which  the  image  of  the  god  was  set  up.  Out  of 
the  shrine,  or  single  chamber  containing  the  idol,  the 
stately  temple  was  evolved  as  the  acts  of  worship  became 
more  complex.  The  shrine  with  its  image  remained  the 
most  sacred  part  of  the  building :  between  it  and  the  outer 
world  was  interposed  the  forecourt  of  the  temple  through 
which  was  the  way  to  the  inner  sanctuary.  So  arose  stately 
buildings  dedicated  to  the  service  of  the  gods  by  the  Nile, 
the  Euphrates,  and  the  Ganges :  and  the  magnificent  house 
erected  to  Jahveh  in  Jerusalem  by  King  Solomon  is  in  the 
memory  of  all  readers  of  the  Bible.  Thus  the  old  senti- 
ment for  locality  in  worship  was  perpetuated  in  a  higher 
form  through  the  temple,  which  became  the  centre  of 
worship  and  a  powerful  means  of  consolidating  religion. 
Moreover,  with  the  progress  of  religious  ideas  the  conse- 
crated building,  by  its  forms,  arrangement,  and  ornamenta- 
tion, was  made  to  convey  a  wealth  of  symbolical  meaning. 
In  keeping  with  the  growth  of  the  temple  as  the 
centre  of  worship,  national  religion  shows  a  marked 
development  in  the  rites  and  modes  of  worship.  These 
assume  fixed  and  elaborate  forms,  and  receive  a  higher 
significance  in  harmony  with  the  desires  and  needs  of  the 
worshippers.  From  the  primitive  period,  sacrifice  and 
prayer  have  formed  the  main  element  of  the  cultus.  In 
the  religion  of  the  tribe  the  sacrifice  was  an  act  of 
homage,  or  a  gift  to  the  god  in  order  to  win  some  favour 


126        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

from  him.  And  the  belief  that  evils  could  be  averted,  and 
good  things  gained  by  this  means,  is  still  operative  in 
national  religion. 

"  Mutter  a,  crede  mihi,  capiunt  hominesque  deosque, 
Placatur  donis  Jupiter  ipse  datis"  (Ovid). 

In  tribal  religion  we  find  also  the  idea  of  sacrifice  as 
a  means  of  communion  between  the  worshippers  and  the 
god.1  The  totem  or  sacred  animal,  eaten  by  the  god  and 
his  people  at  a  common  meal,  was  supposed  to  strengthen 
the  bond  of  union  between  them :  the  sacrifice  had  a 
sacramental  significance.  In  national  religion  there  is  a 
tendency  to  remove  or  soften  some  of  the  grosser  features 
of  primitive  sacrifice.  This  is  done  through  the  method 
of  substitution,  the  substitute  being  supposed  to  retain  the 
efficacy  of  the  original.  Human  sacrifices,  there  seems 
little  reason  to  doubt,  were  frequent  in  early  times,  and 
among  the  Semites,  Greeks,  and  Hindus  they  existed  at  a 
later  date.2  The  substitution  of  an  animal  was  at  least 
the  indication  of  the  growth  of  a  humaner  spirit,  though 
in  time  of  stress  there  would  be  an  impulse  to  fall  back 
on  the  elder  and  more  savage  rite.  Sacrifice,  as  an 
institution  in  the  religion  of  the  nation,  has  evolved  in 
two  directions.  In  the  one  case  the  magical  aspect  of 
sacrifice,  its  mysterious  power  to  constrain  the  gods,  has 
preponderated.  Of  this  Brahmanism  is  a  notable  instance. 
This  tendency  conflicts  with  the  development  of  spiritual 
ideas ;  and  the  new  religious  movement  under  Buddha  did 
away  with  the  old  sacrificial  system.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  find  a  higher  development  of  the  sacrificial  idea,  when 
stress  is  laid  on  sacrifice  as  a  means  of  strengthening  the 

1  Robertson  Smith  believed  this  to  be    the   original  form  of  sacrifice. 
Vid.  his  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  213  ff.     In  this  he  has  been  followed 
by  Pfleiderer,  Religionsphilosophie,  3rd  ed.      But  the  theory  suffers  from 
lack  of  evidence  ;  and  it  likewise  ignores  the  existence  of  other  motives  to 
sacrifice  which  must  have  been  operative  from  the  first. 

2  Illustrations  from  Greece  are  the  custom  of  hurling  a  victim  from  the 
Leucadian  promontory  once  a  year,  and  the  practice  of  offering  two  human 
victims  at  the  festival  of  the  Thargelia. 


NATIONAL    RELIGION  127 

bond  of  communion  with  the  god ;  and  more  especially 
when  it  is  regarded  as  a  means  of  restoring  the  fellowship 
of  men  with  the  deity  which  has  been  marred  and  broken 
by  sin.  This  conception  of  sacrifice  comes  to  clear  ex- 
pression among  the  Hebrews,  though  here  as  elsewhere 
the  inclination  grew  to  magnify  the  ritual  efficacy  of  the 
duly  performed  act.  Where,  however,  there  is  a  deepening 
of  the  inward  side  of  the  religious  consciousness,  the 
inadequacy  of  any  external  method  of  propitiation  becomes 
apparent.  Hence  the  cry  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  for  the 
purification  of  the  mind  and  will,  for  "  a  clean  heart  and  a 
right  spirit  within." 

Along  with  sacrifice  naturally  goes  prayer  to  the  god  ; 
and  prayer  is  one  of  those  religious  acts  which  are  practised 
wherever  religion  exists.  It  is  the  instinctive  cry  of  the 
human  soul  to  a  power  that  can  help  it  in  its  time  of  need. 
We  have  already  pointed  out  how  primitive  prayers  reflect 
the  temper  of  primitive  religion ;  and  in  tribal  culture, 
permeated  by  magical  ideas,  prayer  is  assimilated  to  the 
spell  and  the  incantation.  In  the  lower  culture,  prayer 
assumes  a  fixed  form  of  words,  and  has  a  mysterious 
efficiency.  In  the  organisation  of  national  worship  the 
liturgical  element  is,  of  course,  prominent,  and  prayers 
to  particular  gods  run  into  a  stereotyped  form  of  words. 
These  acquire  a  peculiar  sanctity,  and  they  are  sometimes 
scrupulously  repeated  even  when  the  language  in  which 
they  were  originally  spoken  has  become  obsolete. 
Brahmanism  is  remarkable  for  its  belief  in  the  power  of  the 
rightly  uttered  prayer  to  compel  the  gods.  "  The  faithful," 
we  are  told,  "  find  Agni  when  they  have  recited  the  spells." 
It  is  a  curious  witness  to  the  persistence  of  the  lower 
elements  out  of  which  a  religion  has  evolved,  that  in 
ancient  Babylonia,  side  by  side  with  prayers  breathing 
a  lofty  spirit,  stand  others  which  in  essence  are  magical 
spells.  In  prayer  the  values  which  prevail  in  the  social 
system  receive  articulate  expression :  men  seek  from  the 
gods  what  they  most  desire  for  themselves.  The  religion 
of  the  Homeric  poems  is  the  religion  of  an  aristocracy, 


128        BEGINNINGS    AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

where  ideals  of  honour  and  knightly  valour  prevail,  and 
this  temper  finds  utterance  in  prayer.  Hence  the  cry 
of  the  aged  priest  to  his  patron,  the  god  of  the  silver  bow, 
to  avenge  the  injury  done  to  his  servant's  honour  by 
Agamemnon.  The  hero  Diomede  petitions  Athene,  the 
tireless  maiden,  to  grant  him  to  slay  the  foe  who  had 
boasted  over  him.1  With  the  growth  of  the  ethical  con- 
sciousness, prayer  becomes  the  expression  of  a  desire  for 
higher  goods ;  for  men  were  beginning  to  realise  that  they 
could  not  live  by  bread  alone.  Thus  the  Persian  prayed 
to  Ahura-Mazda  for  strength  to  help  on  the  kingdom  of 
righteousness  against  the  kingdom  of  darkness.  And  the 
prayer  of  Nebukadnezar  to  Marduk  breathes  a  pure  aspira- 
tion :  "  Set  in  my  heart  the  fear  of  thy  Godhead :  grant 
me  what  thou  deemest  best :  for  thou  it  is  who  hast  created 
my  life."  2  This  longing  after  the  higher  values  is  best  set 
forth  in  Hebrew  and  Christian  prayer ;  and  with  them  we 
may  perhaps  compare  the  noble  utterance  which  Plato 
has  put  in  the  mouth  of  Socrates  at  the  close  of  the 
Phasdrus : — "  Beloved  Pan,  and  all  ye  other  nymphs  who 
haunt  this  place,  give  me  beauty  in  the  inward  soul ;  and 
may  the  outward  and  inward  man  be  at  one.  May  I 
reckon  the  wise  to  be  wealthy,  and  may  I  have  such  a 
quantity  of  gold  as  a  temperate  man,  and  he  alone,  can 
bear  and  carry."8  The  prophetic  spirit  of  the  Hebrew 
and  the  philosophic  mind  of  the  Greek  were  agreed  in 
thinking  the  best  man  can  ask  of  God  is  a  clean  heart  and 
a  right  spirit. 

The  evolution  of  worship  in  the  nation  brought  about 
the  creation  of  persons  specially  qualified,  and  charged 
with  the  care  of  the  offices  of  religion.  We  can  trace  the 
rude  beginnings  of  this  in  the  medicine-man,  the  wizard, 
and  the  shaman  of  savage  tribes.  But  it  is  only  with  the 
organisation  of  temple  worship  and  a  system  of  sacrifices, 
that  an  official  priesthood  comes  into  existence.  Primitive 

1  Iliad,  i.  37-43  and  v.  115-120. 

*  Farnell,  Evolution  of  Religion,  p.  221. 

*  Phcedriis,  279  B,  Jowett's  translation. 


NATIONAL   RELIGION  129 

society  had  its  sacrifices,  yet  it  was  not  the  prerogative  of 
any  special  class  to  offer  them :  the  worshipper  himself,  in 
virtue  of  his  membership  of  the  tribe,  made  his  offering 
to  the  tribal  god.  The  idea  of  this  original  right  of 
sacrifice  survived  in  Israel  up  to  the  time  of  Saul  and 
David,  for  we  read  of  both  these  kings  offering  sacrifice  on 
their  own  account.  With  the  development  of  the  temple 
ritual  we  see  the  privilege  of  sacrifice  passing  into  the 
hands  of  a  close  corporation,  a  hereditary  priesthood  in- 
vested with  peculiar  sanctity,  and  supposed  to  be  endowed 
with  special  knowledge.  In  India  and  Persia,  Babylon, 
Israel,  and  Egypt,  powerful  priesthoods  grew  up,  monopolis- 
ing sacred  functions,  and  exercising  great  influence  on  the 
national  religion  and  life.  When  religion  has  a  complex 
ritual,  and  a  belief  in  its  mechanical  efficacy  prevails,  the 
office  of  the  priest  is  exalted.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
nations  where  secular  and  sacred  functions  are  not  rigidly 
separated,  and  the  priesthood  is  not  a  close  corporation  or 
hereditary  caste,  the  influence  and  authority  of  the  priests 
are  less.  In  China  and  in  Eome  the  priests  were  also 
state  officials,  and  the  Koman  Pontifex  Maximus  could 
hold  several  other  offices.  In  Greece,  the  fact  that  the 
priests  did  not  hold  office  for  life  depressed  the  importance 
of  the  priestly  class ;  and  when  the  idea  maintained  itself 
that  the  priests  were  the  representatives  of  the  people,  the 
dominance  of  the  priesthood  was  not  practicable.  On  the 
other  hand,  nowhere  has  a  hereditary  priesthood  formed  a 
more  exclusive  caste,  or  received  higher  privileges,  than  is 
the  case  in  India. 

The  rise  of  an  organised  priesthood  is  a  fact  of  much 
importance  in  the  evolution  of  religion.  It  secures  the 
continuous  performance  of  the  offices  of  religion  and  the 
carrying  out  of  an  impressive  cultus.  And  where  the 
priests  were  qualified  by  ability  and  knowledge  to  instruct 
and  direct  the  people,  they  were  an  influence  on  society 
making  for  good.  On  the  contrary,  where  the  priests 
were  the  interested  instruments  of  a  superstitious  and 
magical  cult,  they  became  a  factor  in  the  national  life 
9 


130        BEGINNINGS    AND    GROWTH    OF    RELIGION 

hostile  to  spiritual  progress.  Hence  the  priests  and  the 
prophets  were  often  in  sharp  antagonism.  As  a  general 
rule,  the  growth  of  a  well-organised  priesthood  within  a 
nation  acts  as  a  conservative  force  on  the  side  of  religion. 
A  body  of  similarly  trained  men,  whose  interests  are 
closely  identified  with  the  maintenance  of  an  existing 
system,  is  not  friendly  to  new  ideas :  they  are  naturally 
opposed  to  changes  which  threaten  to  damage  their  own 
position  and  prestige.  Presenting  a  united  front  to  the 
spirit  of  change,  they  make  the  progress  of  reform  difficult. 
Eeform,  when  it  does  come,  comes  more  often  than  not 
through  a  sharp  conflict  between  the  upholders  of  the  old 
order  and  the  prophets  of  the  new. 

The  cult  us  is  the  vital  centre  of  religion,  and  the 
rallying  point  of  religious  emotions  and  sentiments.  More- 
over, it  plays  an  important  part  in  the  development  of  the 
character  of  the  gods.  A  god  must  be  represented  before 
he  can  be  worshipped,  but  the  needs  and  interests  of 
worship  react  on  the  character  of  the  god  in  the  way  of 
giving  it  clearer  definition  and  more  determinate  qualities. 
When  a  deity  is  intermittently  worshipped,  and  that  in 
varying  forms  according  to  the  preference  of  the  individual, 
his  nature  will  be  vague  and  fluctuating.  His  attributes 
will  not  be  the  same  for  each  worshipper.  But  when  the 
cultus  is  regularly  organised,  the  need  arises  for  uniformity 
of  representation ;  and  the  demands  of  the  religious  spirit 
call  for  a  greater  fixity  and  fulness  in  the  conception  of 
the  god.  On  the  ground  of  what  is  required  in  the  cultus, 
the  attributes  of  a  god  have  gradually  been  specified  and 
connected  in  an  individual  whole,  and  the  character  of  the 
god  has  gained  general  recognition. 

Though  we  may  not  be  able  to  explain  why  a  particular 
god  came  to  be  possessed  of  particular  qualities,  we  can 
nevertheless  be  sure  that  imagination  did  not  work  in  a 
haphazard  fashion.  The  needs  of  worship,  acting  as  a 
principle  of  selection,  gave  prominence  to  certain  attributes 
and  made  them  characteristic ;  and  by  the  constant  per- 
formance of  the  cult,  they  were  connected  in  a  more  or 


UNIVERSAL    RELIGION  131 

less  coherent  whole  by  the  mind  of  the  people.  A  well- 
organised  cultus  thus  becomes  an  indispensable  means  of 
giving  fixity  to  the  representations  of  the  gods,  and  of 
endowing  them  with  a  definite  character  and  individuality. 

C. — UNIVERSAL  EELIGION. 

National  Eeligion  remains  the  affair  of  the  nation,  and 
has  its  vital  centre  in  the  official  and  publicly  recognised 
cult  of  the  gods  of  the  State.  Through  the  organised 
worship  of  the  gods  the  national  spirit  and  ideals  find 
expression.  The  individual  shares  in  this  worship  not  as 
an  individual,  but  as  a  citizen ;  and  the  religion  of  the 
citizen  consists  in  the  right  and  regular  performance  of 
those  acts  of  worship  which  are  prescribed  and  required. 
What  the  private  opinions  of  the  individual  are  in  regard 
to  religion  is  not  of  much  concern  to  the  State :  it  is  the 
acts  which  count.  At  this  stage  of  religious  development 
there  is  little  desire  to  scrutinise  the  mind  of  the  individual 
or  to  test  his  beliefs :  he  passes  for  religious  so  long  as  he 
pays  outward  respect  to  the  official  religion  and  complies 
with  its  demands.  Nor  is  there  any  desire  to  identify 
religious  service  with  the  character  and  conduct  of  life  as 
a  whole.  Though  National  Keligion  does  in  some  instances 
rise  to  higher  levels,  still  in  the  main  it  is  true  that  the 
spirit  of  externality  clings  to  it;  and  for  this  reason  it 
was  inadequate  to  the  needs  of  the  religious  mind  when 
it  became  more  reflective  and  conscious  of  itself.  The 
consciousness  of  this  defect  explains 

(a)  The  Rise  of  Universal  Eeligion. 

Though  the  actual  birth  of  Universal  Eeligion  is  a 
well-marked  and  decisive  episode  in  the  evolution  of  the 
religious  consciousness,  yet,  like  every  other  movement  of 
the  human  spirit,  it  was  prepared  for  by  what  had  gone 
before.  A  religious  environment  had  been  gradually 
forming  which  became  the  medium  in  which  those  spiritual 


132        BEGINNINGS    AND    GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

personalities  could  develop  who  were  to  be  the  leaders 
and  reformers  of  religion.  More  than  once  we  have 
referred  to  the  growth  and  enrichment  of  personality  which 
were  the  outcome  of  the  social  life  of  the  civilised  state. 
The  citizen,  interacting  with  other  citizens  and  moved  by 
new  motives  and  higher  interests,  builds  up  a  personal  life 
and  develops  a  character  for  himself.  This  deepening  of 
personality  is  of  momentous  importance  to  religion,  for  it 
means  that  man  becomes  a  centre  of  religious  experience 
and  evolves  a  spiritual  life  of  his  own.  The  monotonous 
uniformity  of  early  society  begins  to  pass  away,  and  in 
religion,  as  in  other  things,  man  differentiates  himself  from 
those  about  him.  With  the  development  of  the  inner  side 
of  religion,  man  gradually  comes  to  realise  that  the 
naturalistic  ideas  and  the  external  acts  by  which  existing 
religion  expressed  itself  are  no  longer  sufficient.  Inward 
feeling  and  individual  conviction  must  somehow  find 
utterance  in  religious  beliefs  and  worship :  the  new  content 
of  personal  life  must  gain  a  form  in  which  to  realise  itself 
in  the  religious  sphere.  We  do  not  suggest  that  this 
feeling  was  simultaneously  experienced  by  individuals,  and 
moved  them  in  the  same  degree.  That  is  not  so;  for 
there  will  always  be  many  who  are  the  children  of  tradition 
and  custom,  and  to  whom  change  is  distasteful.  But 
social  development  had  made  possible  a  new  fulness  of 
spiritual  experience,  and  this  spirit  first  found  utterance 
in  men  of  marked  personality  and  genius.  Standing  like 
watchers  on  an  eminence  apart,  they  had  the  vision  of  a 
better  order  of  things  while  the  world  beneath  was  still 
careless  and  unheeding.  And  what  they  had  seen  in 
vision  they  told  with  inner  conviction  as  a  message  for  the 
age.  The  knowledge  gained  by  insight  was  matured  by 
reflexion,  and  it  became  a  word  in  season  for  the  men  of 
the  time,  a  word  sent  forth  with  the  power  and  persuasive- 
ness which  proceed  from  vivid  perception  and  personal 
experience.  This  phenomenon  was  something  altogether 
fresh  in  the  religious  history  of  man.  The  personal  factor 
which  underlies  all  spiritual  development  was  asserting 


UNIVERSAL   RELIGION  133 

itself,  and,  like  a  process  of  fermentation  once  set  up,  it 
worked  effectively  and  produced  great  changes.  In  this 
way  the  conception  of  the  religious  relationship  was 
gradually  spiritualised  and  reconstituted,  so  that  it  could 
serve  as  a  basis  for  Universal  Eeligion. 

The  movement  of  which  I  have  been  speaking  may 
be  broadly  termed  prophetic,  for  it  had  its  source  in  the 
teaching  of  gifted  and  inspired  individuals.  These  prophetic 
figures  have  appeared  in  various  nations  and  at  different 
times,  giving  articulate  utterance  to  the  needs  and  aspira- 
tions which  had  been  slowly  forming  within  the  national 
life.  It  is  significant  that  these  prophetic  voices  do  not 
proceed  from  the  circle  of  the  priests :  as  a  rule  the  priestly 
class  is  linked  too  closely  by  habit  and  interest  to  the 
official  religion  to  recognise  that  the  demand  is  urgent  and 
the  time  ripe  for  a  new  spiritual  development.  The  servant 
of  an  institution  is  seldom  its  dispassionate  critic,  and  a 
truer  judgment  is  often  reached  from  a  detached  standpoint. 
The  prophets  arise  from  the  ranks  of  the  people,  lonely  and 
commanding  figures  whose  eyes  pierce  the  veil  of  appear- 
ances, and  whose  lips  speak  the  things  they  know.  They 
signalise  the  advent  and  the  power  of  the  personal  factor 
in  religion,  the  principle  destined  to  play  so  important  a 
part  in  higher  religion.  Speaking  roughly,  we  may  say 
that  the  period  from  the  eighth  to  the  sixth  century  B.C. 
is  more  especially  the  era  of  prophetic  religion.  It  is 
curious  and  significant  that  during  this  epoch  a  wave  of 
religious  influence  seemed  to  pass  over  peoples  widely 
separated  in  space,  and  fresh  spiritual  impulses  broke  into 
life  with  far-reaching  consequences.  The  eighth  century 
B.C.  saw  the  rise  of  the  great  prophets  of  Israel,  and  they 
stand  at  the  beginning  of  a  movement  which  was  to  continue 
to  the  time  of  the  Exile.  Considerably  earlier  than  the 
rise  of  the  prophetic  movement  in  Israel  there  had  appeared 
the  founder  of  the  Persian  religion,  Zarathustra,  a  real 
personage  who  lifted  the  religion  of  his  people  to  a  higher 
level,  and  was  an  enduring  influence  in  their  religious  de- 
velopment. Then,  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  Confucius  taught 


134        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

in  China,  and  Buddha  stept  forth  to  preach  his  new  gospel 
in  India.  The  same  century  saw  the  appearance  of  the 
Orphic  movement  and  the  Mysteries  in  Greece.  Perhaps 
it  may  be  thought  that  we  are  straining  the  meaning  of 
the  term  when  we  seek  to  bring  these  latter  developments 
into  line  with  the  prophetic;  and  no  doubt  the  Greek 
Mysteries  and  the  preaching  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  differ 
widely  in  meaning  and  purpose.  Nevertheless,  Orphism 
has  this  in  common  with  the  religious  movement  of  which 
we  are  speaking,  that  it  accentuated  the  individual  side  of 
piety  and  was  a  reaction  against  the  traditional  conception 
of  religion.  It  found  its  way  into  Greece  at  a  time  when 
faith  in  the  Homeric  gods  had  been  shaken,  and  it  sought 
to  supply  a  want  which  the  earlier  religion  had  ignored. 
Man,  conscious  of  himself  as  a  centre  of  value,  begins  to 
have  forward-looking  thoughts  which  go  beyond  this  world  : 
what  has  religion  to  say  of  this  ?  The  heart  of  Orphism 
was  its  faith  in  the  immortal  power  and  destiny  of  the 
human  soul ;  and  by  its  "  revelation  "  (eVoTrreta)  it  strove 
to  fill  its  adherents  with  the  strength  and  assurance  of 
the  life  to  come.  This  was  something  individual ;  and  the 
Greek  Mysteries  disclose  the  significant  process  of  religious 
societies  forming  within  the  nation,  membership  in  which 
was  voluntary  and  open  to  all.  This  was  one  of  several 
signs  which  can  be  detected  here  and  there  among  the 
nations,  that  the  old  and  time-honoured  conception  of 
religion  was  beginning  to  break  down.  Religion  hitherto 
was  in  essence  a  social  function,  whether  of  a  tribal  group 
or  of  a  nation,  and  the  individual's  relation  to  it  was 
naturally  determined  by  his  membership  in  the  community. 
The  better  minds  of  the  race  were  now  feeling  that  religion 
must  mean  more  to  the  individual  than  this.  Man  was 
becoming  conscious  of  a  personal  character,  and  his  desire 
was  turning  towards  a  personal  destiny  distinct  from  that 
of  the  nation  of  which  he  was  a  citizen.  On  the  whole, 
National  Religion,  with  certain  exceptions,  had  said  little 
about  a  life  hereafter,  and  the  notion  of  another  world 
had  remained  shadowy  and  ineffective.  The  living  and 


UNIVERSAL    RELIGION  135 

operative  motive  was  the  nation  and  its  destinies  on  earth. 
The  growth  of  the  personal  and  prophetic  spirit  liberated 
new  ideas  and  interests,  which  worked  to  bring  about 
another  and  a  deeper  way  of  regarding  the  world  and  life. 
Prophetism,  conceived  in  the  sense  indicated,  did  not 
indulge  in  cosmic  speculation,  nor  did  it  make  any  de- 
liberate and  sustained  attempt  at  theological  construction. 
It  was  rather  a  new  spirit  which  purified  and  vitalised 
existing  religious  conceptions ;  and  its  essential  theme  was 
teaching  about  life,  its  meaning  and  its  end.  This  teaching 
had  its  source  and  inspiration  in  the  subjective  side  of  the 
religious  relation:  it  proceeded  from  a  personal  con- 
sciousness of  what  religion  ought  to  be. 

We  may  illustrate  this  process  from  the  prophetic 
movement  in  Israel  which  began  in  the  eighth  century  B.C. 
The  leaders  of  this  movement  did  not  create  a  religion : 
they  set  out  from  the  earlier  faith  of  Israel,  but  they 
purified  and  ennobled  it  by  infusing  into  it  a  new  ethical 
spirit.  Isaiah,  Amos,  and  Hosea  were  men  who  spoke  out 
of  the  fulness  of  an  inner  experience :  they  were  possessed 
by  the  consciousness  of  a  mission  they  must  fulfil  and  a 
divine  word  they  had  to  communicate.  They  were  con- 
strained to  protest  against  the  sensuous  and  impure 
conceptions  of  Jahveh  which  prevailed  in  the  popular 
mind,  and  to  denounce  the  exaggerated  importance  attached 
to  religious  ceremonies  and  sacrifices.  As  they  looked  and 
mused,  the  fire  burned  within  them,  and  they  spake  with 
their  tongue.  From  of  old  Jahveh  had  been  the  "  Holy 
One  of  Israel " ;  but  while  the  people  loved  to  think  first 
of  Jahveh  as  the  God  of  the  nation,  the  prophets  pro- 
claimed His  holiness  with  impressive  earnestness.  Jahveh 
was  a  righteous  God,  and  His  will  was  an  ethical  law  :  hence 
righteousness  of  spirit  accompanied  by  obedience  to  the 
divine  will  was  the  true  service  and  sacrifice  of  man. 
"  Sacrifice  and  offering  thou  didst  not  desire  ...  I  delight 
to  do  thy  will,  0  my  God !  yea  thy  law  is  written  within 
my  heart."1  This  ethical  conception  of  God  was  in 
*  Ps.  xl.  6-8. 


136        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

principle  a  monotheistic  faith,  and  it  carried  with  it  the 
idea  that  piety  of  heart,  revealed  in  obedience  of  life,  was 
the  duty  God  required  of  man.  In  moving  forward  to  this 
large  and  enlightened  creed  the  prophets  were  at  the 
same  tune  moving  away  from  the  limitations  of  National 
Religion.  The  God  who  was  the  "  Lord  of  the  whole 
earth "  could  not  be  the  monopoly  of  one  nation :  the 
worship  of  the  God  whose  service  was  righteousness  could 
not  be  restricted  to  a  single  ritual  system.  In  thus  making 
religion  more  inward  and  personal,  the  prophets  were  like- 
wise making  it  more  universal ;  and  it  is  their  imperishable 
glory  that,  out  of  the  wreck  of  the  fortunes  of  the  nation, 
they  saved  its  religion  for  humanity.  No  doubt  it  cannot 
be  said  that  they  realised  in  all  its  fulness  the  idea  of  a 
universal  religion :  they  had  not  completely  grasped  the 
principle  that  true  religion  is  in  all  places  where  men 
worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  But  the  prophets  assuredly 
had  learned  to  recognise  that  the  religion  of  Jahveh  was 
not  for  Israel  alone,  and  they  foretold  the  day  when  heathen 
peoples  would  acknowledge  Him  and  come  to  worship  at  His 
shrine.1  The  human  mind  was  drawing  very  near  to  the 
conception  of  a  universal  religion. 

The  ethical  monotheism  and  the  universalism  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets  from  the  eighth  century  B.C.  to  the  close  of 
the  Exile  marked  the  flood-tide  of  spiritual  religion  in  the 
Old  Testament.  We  note  meanwhile  that  in  a  nation,  as 
in  an  individual,  a  high  tide  of  spiritual  life  is  usually 
followed  by  an  ebb :  a  period  of  relaxed  energy  succeeds 
the  time  of  tension,  and  the  forward  movement  having 
spent  itself  a  reaction  ensues.  So  it  was  in  Israel.  The 
day  came  when  the  voice  of  the  prophet  was  silent,  and 
there  was  no  longer  any  open  vision.  The  reaction  took 
the  form  of  a  return  to  legal  and  ceremonial  religion  in  an 
amplified  and  intensified  form.  Of  this  the  Priestly  Code, 
as  we  find  it  in  Exodus  and  Leviticus,  is  the  memorial. 
The  return  to  ritualism  meant  a  return  to  nationalism  and 
particularism,  and  the  loss  of  the  larger  and  more  humane 
1  Vid.  Isa.  ii.  2,  xl.  10 ;  Mic.  iv.  1  ff. 


UNIVERSAL   RELIGION  137 

outlook.  Eeligion  in  Israel  became  mechanised,  and  the 
worship  of  the  spirit  was  depressed  by  a  burden  of  observ- 
ances and  prohibitions.  We  see  a  similar  process  in  the 
Persian  religion,  which  became  legalised  and  stereotyped 
in  the  Vendidad.  In  both  cases  also  we  witness  a  strong 
growth  of  eschatological  conceptions,  and  these  reflect  in 
their  scope  and  purpose  the  narrower  mind  and  temper 
which  religion  has  developed.  When  religion  becomes  a 
tyranny  of  sheer  observance,  it  can  only  be  saved  from 
decay  and  death,  if  it  is  saved,  by  a  new  and  powerful 
uprising  of  the  ethical  spirit  which  breaks  the  dominance 
of  a  priestly  caste  and  proclaims  the  freedom  of  faith. 

Where  such  a  decisive  reaction  has  taken  place,  it  has 
done  so  at  the  instance  and  under  the  inspiration  of  great 
spiritual  personalities  who  have  become  the  founders  of  a 
new  religion.  These  commanding  figures  do  not  step  up 
in  the  stage  divorced  from  all  connexion  with  what  has 
gone  before :  their  reaction  against  existing  religion  is 
made  possible  by  their  positive  relation  to  it.  But  we 
certainly  cannot  fully  explain  them  by  an  analysis  of  past 
history  or  by  a  study  of  the  existing  religious  environment. 
There  will  always  remain  a  unique  and  inexplicable  element 
in  the  depths  of  personality,  and  nowhere  is  this  so  patent 
as  in  the  case  of  the  spiritual  genius  who  founds  a  religion. 
The  older  forms  of  religion  grew  up  slowly  and  almost 
imperceptibly,  the  product  of  the  collective  mind  seeking 
satisfaction  for  its  needs.  Founded  religions,  on  the 
contrary,  are  the  outcome  of  a  vivid  personal  experience 
on  the  part  of  an  individual,  and  reflect  his  outlook  on 
the  world  and  life.  Taking  form  at  the  outset  in  the 
religious  consciousness  of  a  person,  these  religions  lay 
stress  on  the  inward  and  subjective  side  of  the  religious 
relation.  They  invite  a  personal  faith  in  the  founder 
and  a  feeling  of  sympathy  with  his  message.  The  fact 
that  the  inward  and  spiritual  side  of  religion  is  thus 
emphasised  involves  a  new  and  deeper  idea  of  the 
religious  relationship  itself.  The  old  conception  of 
physical  kinship  with  the  gods,  and  the  notion  of  a 


138        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

natural  relation  between  the  god  and  the  tribe  or  nation, 
are  felt  now  to  be  crude  and  inadequate.  Man's  relation 
to  his  god  is  no  longer  a  ready-made  fact,  but  a  spiritual 
end  to  be  realised.  The  inner  spirit  is  not  the  monopoly 
of  any  caste  or  people,  and  it  is  in  his  spirit  that  man  is 
religious.  So  the  ancient  limits  are  transcended :  faith  is 
possible  for  all ;  and  because  it  is  so,  religion  in  its  higher 
forms  becomes  missionary  in  its  activity  and  universal  in 
its  claims.  Instead  of  a  religion  for  a  tribe  or  a  nation, 
we  have  a  religion  for  humanity. 

(b)  Main  Features  of  Universal  Eeligion. 

The  final  claim  of  religion  to  be  universal  is  in  singular 
contrast  to  the  ideas  and  temper  which  prevailed  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  religious  development.  For  the  tribe  and 
the  nation  cling  to  their  religion  as  something  peculiarly 
their  own,  a  possession  which  they  could  not  and  would 
not  share  with  alien  peoples.  At  first  blush  it  might 
appear  that  the  process  of  individualising  religion  had 
narrowed  rather  than  extended  its  scope.  Yet  on  further 
consideration  it  will  be  plain  that  what  seemed  a  paradox 
is  in  reality  a  great  truth :  in  individualising  religion  we 
are  at  the  same  time  universal ising  it.  For  by  individual- 
ising is  here  meant  construing  religion  as  something 
inward  and  personally  realised ;  and  as  men  have  the 
same  spiritual  nature  they  can  partake  of  the  same 
religious  experience.  Neither  physical  kinship  in  a  group 
nor  participation  in  a  given  ritual  system  can  create  in  a 
man  or  take  from  him  the  human  spirit  by  which  he 
worships  and  serves  his  god.  Hence  Universal  Religion 
in  appealing  to  the  spirit  appeals  to  men  without 
distinction  of  class  or  race.  The  salvation  or  redemption 
which  it  offers  is  open  to  all ;  just  as  the  object  of  worship 
is  one,  and  the  method  of  divine  service  everywhere  the 
same. 

Historical    religions  which   claim   to  be  universal  are 
all  of  them  religions  which  have  been  personally  founded. 


UNIVERSAL    RELIGION  139 

From  small  beginniDgs  they  have  spread  rapidly,  and  the 
missionary  zeal  they  have  displayed  has  corresponded  to 
their  inward  vitality.  After  passing  through  many  vicis- 
situdes these  religions  are  still  alive  and  vigorous,  and 
claim  a  multitude  of  adherents  :  they  are  Mohammedanism, 
Buddhism,  and  Christianity.  Let  us  consider  how  far 
they  respectively  fulfil  the  conditions  of  a  true  universality. 
We  shall  begin  by  considering  the  character  of  the  latest 
of  these  religions — the  religion  of  Islam. 

In  rapidity  of  growth  neither  Christianity  nor 
Buddhism  is  so  remarkable  as  the  religion  of  Islam, 
which  in  something  like  fifty  years  overran  Arabia  and 
dominated  the  Arab  races.  Semitic  paganism  lingered 
longest  among  the  Arabs.  In  the  sixth  century  after 
Christ  the  popular  faith  of  the  Arabs  was  a  belief  in 
jinns,  or  spirits  that  haunted  deserts,  ruins,  and  uncanny 
places.  Allah  was  reverenced  as  the  giver  of  rain  and 
good  gifts,  the  controller  of  destiny,  and  the  avenger  of 
injustice.  But  in  the  pre-Islamic  period  there  was  no 
definitely  organised  cult  of  Allah,  nor  special  rites 
dedicated  to  his  worship.  From  a  spiritual  point  of  view 
this  was  apparently  a  somewhat  bare  and  unpromising 
soil  from  which  a  universal  religion  was  to  spring.  The 
rise  of  Islam  in  this  mean  environment  was  due  to  the 
inspiration  and  religious  genius  of  Mohammed.  Never- 
theless, we  must  remember  that  Jewish  and  Christian 
influences  were  at  work  in  Arabia  towards  the  close  of 
the  sixth  century,  and  higher  minds  were  being  touched 
to  religious  issues  of  which  the  older  paganism  knew 
nothing.  Apart  from  such  influences  it  would  be  hard 
to  understand  the  teaching  of  the  Prophet.  The  faith 
of  Islam  itself  must  in  the  first  instance  be  explained 
through  the  intense  religious  consciousness  of  Mohammed, 
and  by  his  vivid  sense  of  a  divine  message  and  a  divine 
mission.  He  was  no  vulgar  impostor,  but  sincere  accord- 
ing to  his  lights,  and  his  own  religious  consciousness 
dominated  the  development  of  his  religion.  "  God  is 
one  " :  the  unity  and  omnipotence  of  Allah  stand  in  the 


140        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

forefront  of  the  creed  of  Islam.  The  mind  and  will  of 
Allah  were  communicated  to  his  Prophet,  who  in  turn 
revealed  them  to  men.  Islam  is  par  excellence  a  book- 
religion,  and  the  Koran  is  the  book  of  Mohammed.  His 
religion  is  set  down  for  us  there, — a  religion  narrow  and 
intense,  with  simple  and  well-marked  features.  Allah  is 
one,  transcendent  and  omnipotent,  and  he  knows  all. 
"He  knows  what  is  in  the  sea  and  on  the  land,  not  a 
leaf  falls  without  his  knowing  it."  "  He  is  the  living  and 
abiding  one,  neither  slumber  nor  sleep  overtakes  him." 1 
The  supremacy,  and  even  arbitrariness  of  the  divine  will ; 
the  manifestation  of  that  will  in  his  Prophet ;  the  re- 
sponsibility of  man  and  his  duty  of  slavish  submission  to 
that  will ;  heaven  for  the  faithful  and  hell  for  the  infidel ; 
— these  are  the  main  traits  of  the  religion  of  Islam.  It 
claims  to  be  universal  and  demands  acceptance,  not 
despising  the  suasion  of  force  when  other  methods  fail. 
Mohammed  tolerated  and  consented  to  the  propagation  of 
his  creed  by  the  sword,  and  without  force  it  would  not 
have  won  its  way  so  speedily.  The  limitations  of  this 
religion  are  its  anthropomorphism,  its  atmosphere  of 
miracle,  the  poverty  of  its  idea  of  God,  and  its  in- 
tolerance. Among  less  advanced  races  such  as  the 
Negroes  and  the  Mongols,  Islam,  in  virtue  of  its  simplicity 
and  directness,  has  won  its  way.  But  it  is  just  on  the 
inward  and  spiritual  side,  so  important  in  a  religion  which 
aspires  to  be  universal,  that  Islam  is  weak.  Its  conception 
of  piety  is  in  the  end  external,  and  stress  is  laid  on  un- 
questioning submission  and  mechanical  obedience.  No 
distinction  is  made  between  the  spiritual  and  the  civil 
order  of  society,  between  Church  and  State ;  nor  is  there 
any  idea  of  religious  toleration.  There  is  a  pronounced 
anthropomorphic  element  in  the  Mohammedan  faith ;  and 
while  the  religion  of  the  Prophet  makes  the  other  world 
intensely  real,  it  gives  no  stimulus  to  social  and  in- 
tellectual development  in  this  world.  On  the  whole 

1  The  Koran  as  quoted  in  Berth olet's  Religionsgeschichtliches  Lesebuch, 
1908,  p.  368. 


UNIVERSAL    RELIGION  141 

Mohammedanism,  though  it  claims  to  be  universal,  only 
transcends  imperfectly  the  limitations  of  National  Eeligion. 
It  lacks  the  inward  spirituality  and  humanity  which  must 
characterise  a  religion  for  all  men.  While  Islam  may 
continue  to  spread  among  savage  and  semi-civilised 
peoples,  it  does  not  and  cannot  win  its  way  among  the 
highly  developed  races. 

Where  Islam  is  weak  Buddhism  is  strong,  for  it  is  a 
religion  which  lays  stress  upon  and  appeals  to  the  inner 
spirit  of  man.  The  system  of  external  precepts  and  ritual 
ordinances  was  set  aside  by  the  missionary  of  the  inner 
life,  Gautama  the  Buddha.  In  one  sense  Buddha,  who 
was  born  in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixth  century  B.C., 
may  be  regarded  as  continuing  Brahmanism  rather  than 
reacting  sharply  against  it.  The  Vedanta  philosophy  had 
already  proclaimed  a  message  of  deliverance  from  the 
illusions  of  this  earthly  experience  through  knowledge. 
And  Buddha's  own  gospel  was  a  gospel  of  deliverance 
from  the  illusions  and  snares  of  sense  through  the 
enlightenment  of  which  he  was  the  prophet.  But  while 
this  is  so,  Buddha  silently  yet  firmly  set  aside  much  that 
was  important  in  the  then  existing  Brahmanism.  The 
system  of  caste  he  treated  as  valueless,  and  the  Brahmanical 
theology  seemed  to  him  futile.  The  elaborate  order  of 
sacrifices  he  judged  to  be  unnecessary  as  well  as  cruel ; 
and  self-torture  he  considered  vain.  To  Gautama  the 
secret  of  man's  sorrow  and  suffering,  and  of  his  redemption 
likewise,  lay  within  himself.  "  Each  man  his  prison 
makes " :  and  inasmuch  as  salvation  came  from  within,  it 
was  open  to  every  one.  "My  redemption,"  he  declared, 
"  is  for  all  men."  The  way  of  wisdom  lay  in  recognising 
the  fact  of  suffering,  in  knowing  its  origin  and  extinction, 
and  the  path  which  led  to  its  extinction.  The  image  of 
Gautama  which  rises  before  us  is  that  of  a  soul  gentle, 
tender,  and  very  pitiful,  offering  salvation  to  a  world 
travailing  in  pain.  The  remedy  he  believed  lay  in  the 
extirpation  of  man's  insatiable  desire,  the  suppression  of 
the  will  to  live,  the  casting  away  of  the  fetters  of  sense. 


142        BEGINNINGS   AND    GROWTH    OF   RELIGION 

The  enlightened  soul  which  enters  on  and  pursues  this 
way  is  following  the  path  which  leads  to  the  supreme 
consummation : 

"  Unto  Nirvana.     He  is  one  with  Life, 
Yet  lives  not.     He  is  blest,  ceasing  to  be. 
Om,  mani  padme,  om !  the  Dewdrop  slips 
Into  the  shining  sea  !  " 

Nirvana,  the  absolute  end,  cannot  be  described  by  any 
positive  predicate.  "  When  from  the  down-rushing  iron 
hammer  the  spark  springs  forth  and  by  and  by  fades,  we 
know  not  whence  the  fire  has  gone — and  so  we  cannot 
say  of  the  finally  redeemed  who  have  escaped  the  fetters 
and  the  flood  of  sensuous  desires,  whither  they  have  gone." 
At  first  sight  Buddhism  might  seem  to  propound  the  in- 
tolerable paradox,  that  the  supreme  value  is  the  annihilation 
of  all  value.  Yet  Nirvana  is  not  pure  nothing,  though  it 
is  deliverance  from  all  change, — from  passion  and  suffering, 
birth  and  death.  Like  the  "  consummation  "  of  the  Neo- 
Platonists  and  some  of  the  mediaeval  mystics,  no  human 
terms  can  describe  it. 

Buddhism  has  the  qualities  of  inwardness,  universality, 
and  humanity,  but  it  has  attained  them  at  the  expense 
of  ceasing  to  be  a  religion  in  the  commonly  accepted  sense 
of  the  word.  For  in  its  original  form  Buddhism  had  no 
God  nor  theology :  it  offered  no  outlook  into  a  higher 
world,  but  was  simply  a  way  of  life  and  an  attitude  to 
experience.  The  goal  was  negative  rather  than  positive. 
Its  career  as  a  religion  in  after  days  would  be  inexplicable 
if  Buddha  himself  had  not  grown  into  a  divine  and  heroic 
figure,  who  was  glorified  in  myth  and  legend,  and  was 
the  centre  around  which  cult-forms  gathered.  Popular 
Buddhism  wandered  far  from  the  way  of  its  founder :  it 
even  came  to  have  a  heaven  and  hell,  and  rewards  and 
punishments  hereafter. 

Though  there  is  much  that  is  gracious  and  fascinating 
in  Buddha  and  his  creed,  this  religion  has  defects  which 
disqualify  it  from  attaining  the  universality  at  which  it 
aims.  There  is  an  eudsemonistic  element  in  Buddhism 


UNIVERSAL    RELIGION  143 

which  expresses  itself  in  the  dread  of  suffering,  as  if 
suffering  were  always  an  evil  to  be  avoided.  With  this 
there  goes  an  individualistic  spirit ;  for  the  end  after  which 
the  Buddhist  strives  is  individual,  and  society  is  only  a 
means  to  the  end.  The  Buddhist  practises  the  virtues 
of  kindness  and  pity  to  pained  and  heavy  laden  mortals, 
but  he  seeks  thereby  to  discipline  and  perfect  himself  in 
the  task  of  extinguishing  desire,  not  to  make  an  evil  world 
better.  Consequently  his  creed  is  a  creed  without  hope 
or  inspiration,  and  he  has  no  incentive  to  do  anything 
for  the  spiritual  development  of  humanity.  The  passive 
side  of  Buddha's  character  is  reflected  in  his  doctrine  of 
desire,  which  is  so  marked  a  feature  of  his  religion.  It 
is  interesting  to  compare  Buddhism  with  Stoicism.  Both 
show  a  "recoil  upon  the  self,"  as  Dr.  E.  Caird  has  said, 
and  both  treat  as  vain  the  values  on  which  the  ordinary 
world  sets  store.  But  in  inner  temper  and  outlook  on 
life  the  two  are  very  different.  If  the  Stoic  despised  "  the 
world  and  the  desire  thereof,"  he  rated  all  the  higher  the 
inner  personality.  He  will  not  shrink  from  sorrow  and 
pain  when  they  come  his  way ;  he  will  endure  them,  and 
by  endurance  prove  his  own  worth.  Even  amid  the 
wreck  of  things  he  would  stand  unmoved — impavidum 
ferient  ruince.  Not  so  the  Buddhist.  Personality  is  too 
deeply  tainted  with  desire  and  passion  to  remain  for  him 
a  centre  of  value.  He  will  die  to  every  desire  because 
all  are  alike  vain :  he  seeks  for  peace  in  some  transcendent 
bourne,  where  love  and  hate,  and  even  the  light  of  con- 
sciousness itself,  have  faded  for  ever  away.  Differing 
here,  Buddhism  and  Stoicism  are  again  alike  in  this,  that 
they  set  before  men,  who  after  all  have  to  live  and  work 
in  this  present  world,  an  ideal  which  they  cannot  con- 
sistently realise. 

Christianity  is  the  third  and  the  greatest  of  the 
universal  religions ;  and  it  is  easy  to  see — and  that  apart 
from  dogmatic  assumptions  which  we  cannot  fairly  make 
at  this  stage — that  it  fulfils  better  than  any  other  faith 
the  conditions  of  a  Universal  Keligion.  The  religious 


144        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

environment  within  which  Christianity  arose  was  Judaism, 
and  the  genesis  of  the  Gospel  is  not  to  be  understood 
apart  from  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  spiritual 
affinity  of  Jesus,  however,  was  not  with  the  existing  Jewish 
religion,  so  legal  and  ceremonial  in  its  character,  but  rather 
with  the  ethical  and  spiritual  religion  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets.  After  religion  had  run  for  long  on  the  dead 
level  of  legal  observance  and  mechanical  performance,  the 
spirit  of  the  older  prophets  flamed  forth  anew  in  Jesus 
and  reached  to  heights  before  unknown.  So  much  so 
that  the  religion  of  Jesus  has  something  of  the  fresh- 
ness of  a  new  creation  as  it  stands  forth  in  contrast  to 
its  mean  surroundings.  Only  imperfectly  is  the  gospel 
of  the  Founder  of  the  Christian  faith  to  be  explained 
through  his  environment  and  the  motives  which  were  at 
work  in  contemporary  society :  more  in  this  religion  than 
in  any  other  do  we  receive  the  impression  and  feel  the 
influence  which  proceed  from  a  unique  personality.  Were 
the  person  of  Jesus  a  mythical  creation,  as  some  in  these 
days  have  suggested,  the  rise  and  development  of  the 
Christian  faith  would  be  quite  unintelligible.  Apart  from 
the  historic  Christ  we  cannot  trace  spiritual  forces  at  work 
in  the  age  and  place,  which  could  have  produced  the  living 
image  of  the  Son  of  Man  and  generated  the  Christian 
spirit. 

Let  me  point  out  briefly  how  much  fuller  justice 
Christianity  does  to  the  claims  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness than  either  Buddhism  or  Islam.  In  the  first  place, 
the  religious  relation  is  maintained  as  a  relation  between 
persons :  according  to  Jesus,  the  image  of  father  and  child 
fitly  represents  the  relation  of  God  to  man.  Moreover, 
the  content  of  the  Christian  idea  of  God  is  far  richer 
than  the  Allah  of  Islam,  who  is  little  more  than  the 
abstraction  of  omnipotence.  If  the  Christian  God  is  a 
Being  who  far  transcends  His  creatures,  He  is  also  the 
Love  which  encompasses  them  and  the  Spirit  which  is 
reconciling  the  world  unto  Himself.  Again,  in  its  way  of 
conceiving  the  individual  and  social  aspects  of  the  religious 


UNIVERSAL    RELIGION  145 

ideal,  and   in  its  doctrine  of   the  right  spiritual   attitude 
to  the  world,  the  religion  of  Jesus  does  ampler  justice  to 
the  needs  and  possibilities  of  human  nature.     Christianity 
neither  merges  the  individual  in  the  social  whole,  nor  does 
it  set  forth  a  religious  end  which  is  merely  individualistic. 
Kather    does    it    regard    the    individual    and    society    as 
essentially  related,  or  complementary  the  one  to  the  other. 
The  spiritual  goal  is  a  kingdom  of  spirits  in  which  theJ 
good   of  the  whole  is  reflected  in  each  of   the  members,* 
and  the  members  find  their  fulfilment  in  the  life  of  the 
whole.     The   Christian  doctrine   of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
is  the  corrective  of  that  false  individualism  which  preaches 
the  attainment  of  his  own  salvation  as  man's  sole  religious 
vocation.     Nevertheless,  no  religion  has  laid  clearer  stress 
on  the  value  of  the  individual  soul  and  its  preciousness 
in  the  sight  of  God.     The  personal  activity  of  Christ  was 
largely  a  saving  and  uplifting  work  for  individuals,  a  work 
which  was  the  expression  of  a  loving  and  compassionate 
spirit.     Yet  the  compassion  of  Christ  is  not  the  resigned  \ 
and    hopeless    pity    of    Buddha.     It    is    inspired    by    theN 
consciousness  of   the  infinite  worth   of  men  and  women!,  \ 
who  are  the  children  of   God,  and   by  the  desire  to  lift^ 
them  upward   to  the  fulness  of  fellowship  with  Him.     For 
the  God  of  Jesus  is  more  than  a  transcendent  Being,  "  on 
the  limit  far  withdrawn."     His  spirit,  bears  witness  with 
our  spirits,  and  the  pure  in  heart  see  Him.     Again,  the 
Christian   attitude   to   the  world   is   far    truer  and    saner 
than  that  of  Buddhism.     Jesus  did  not  fall  into  Buddha's 
error  of  condemning  all  desire  as  in  itself   evil,  for  this 
really  involves  a  mutilation  of  human  nature.     His  aim 
was  to  elevate  and  ennoble  desire,  cleansing  it  from  baser 
elements  and  directing  it  towards  a  spiritual  end.     ConseV^ 
quently  His  message  was  not  to  flee  from  the  world,  but    \ 
to  avoid  being  entangled  and  led  captive  by  purely  worldly 
interests.     The  religion  of  Jesus  calls  for  the  active  exercise 
of  the  will.     It  urges  men  to  overcome  the  world  by  the  \ 
power  of  the  spirit,  and,  through  the  might  of  faith  and    * 
of    purified   affections,  to  make    the   things  of    earth   the 
10 


146        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH    OF    RELIGION 

stepping-stones  by  which  the  soul  mounts  upward  to  its 
supermundane  goal.  Christianity  does  not  seek  to  save 
men  from  the  world,  but  from  the  sin  which  is  the 
deepest  source  of  human  misery  and  degradation.  And 
deliverance  from  sin  is  a  spiritual  process :  it  does  not 
depend  on  external  observances  or  on  a  system  of  sacrifices. 
Christianity  recognises  to  the  full  the  presence  and  influence 
of  sin  in  human  lives,  but  it  preaches  a  gospel  of  redemption 
from  sin  through  the  power  of  divine  grace.  The  last  word 
is  not  pessimistic  but  optimistic.  By  its  full  and  fair 
outlook  on  human  nature  and  human  life,  Christianity  has 
the  best  claim  to  be  the  Universal  Religion. 

It  will  be  said,  and  I  am  not  concerned  to  deny  it, 
that  Christianity  in  its  historical  development  has  not 
remained  true  to  the  large  and  humane  ideal  of  its 
Founder.  It  seems  to  be  the  fate  of  all  religions,  that  a 
time  of  abounding  spiritual  life  passes  into  a  season  of 
decline  and  decay.  The  noble  idealism  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets  was  followed  by  the  dreary  legal  and  ceremonial 
religion  of  later  Judaism.  When  Buddhism  lost  the 
impulse  given  by  its  founder,  it  was  superseded  by  its 
older  rival  and  ousted  from  the  land  of  its  birth.  And  so 
with  Christianity;  there  came  a  reaction  towards  ritual, 
ceremonial,  and  even  magical  ideas  which  reached  a  climax 
in  the  Church  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Moreover,  the  energy 
of  theologians,  incited  by  the  rise  of  heresies,  was  spent 
in  rearing  elaborate  theological  structures;  and  the 
acceptance  of  the  ecclesiastical  creeds  was  pronounced 
necessary  to  salvation,  though  this  was  remote  enough 
from  the  mind  of  Jesus.  Hampered  by  ritual  and 
doctrinal  elements,  Christianity  has  moved  but  slowly 
forward  to  the  accomplishment  of  its  universal  mission. 
Yet  despite  these  obstacles  and  difficulties,  the  Christian 
religion  carries  within  it  powers  of  renewal  and  develop- 
ment greater  than  any  other  religion.  These  worked 
with  conspicuous  effect  in  bringing  about  the  Eeformation ; 
and  to-day,  after  so  long  a  time,  they  are  still  living  and 
operative.  The  intrinsic  greatness  of  Christianity  is 


SURVIVALS   IN    RELIGION  147 

revealed  in  this  capacity  of  development  by  which  it 
advances  with  the  advancing  life  of  humanity,  and,  in  the 
spirit  of  its  Founder,  continues  to  minister  to  the  ever 
growing  and  ever  changing  needs  of  an  aging  world. 
Only  a  religion  which  develops  can  be  a  truly  Universal 
Keligion. 

(c)  Phenomena  of  Survival. 

I  have  thought  it  best  at  this  point  to  direct  atten- 
tion to  a  feature  which  is  very  marked  in  the  history  of 
religions,  and  which  is  commonly  known  as  '  survival.'  In 
this  chapter  the  growth  of  religion  has  been  traced  from 
the  primitive  and  tribal  stage  to  the  development  of 
religion  in  the  civilised  state  or  nation,  and  finally  to  the 
rise  of  Universal  Eeligions.  It  would  be  a  mistake, 
however,  to  suppose  this  is  a  process  in  which  the  older 
beliefs  are  constantly  being  taken  up  into  and  merged  in 
the  later  and  higher  faith.  This  is  often  not  the  case, 
and  we  repeatedly  find  in  a  social  system  earlier  beliefs 
and  practices  existing  side  by  side  with  those  of  a  later 
and  maturer  culture.  We  shall  have  occasion  afterwards 
to  consider  the  bearing  of  these  facts  on  the  interpretation 
of  religious  development.  At  present  it  will  be  enough  to 
draw  attention  to  the  facts ;  and  first  of  all  let  me  remind 
the  reader  that  an  individual  with  some  measure  of 
scientific  culture  often  inconsistently  retains  superstitious 
beliefs,  a  heritage  from  his  early  years.  This  is  still  more 
frequent  in  a  social  system,  which  is  by  no  means  intellec- 
tually homogeneous,  but  contains  very  different  strata  of 
culture  and  intelligence.  Consequently  beliefs  which  are 
discarded  by  the  educated  may  continue  to  influence  the 
thought  and  conduct  of  the  ignorant ;  and  among  the 
adherents  of  the  same  religion  the  faith  of  the  simple  will 
be  leavened  by  superstitions  which  the  cultivated  have 
abandoned.  Christianity  does  not  mean  exactly  the  same 
thing  for  the  speculative  theologian  and  for  the  labourer 
in  the  fields,  nor  is  the  Brahmanism  of  the  intellectual 
Hindu  identical  with  that  of  the  Indian  peasant. 


148        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF   RELIGION 

In  speaking  of  religious  survivals,  let  me  say  at  the 
outset  that  all  religious  beliefs  do  not  maintain  themselves. 
Some  elements  of  older  religion  have  vanished,  leaving  no 
distinguishable  traces  behind  them.  Or,  if  they  persist, 
they  have  ceased  to  possess  a  religious  significance  and 
are  only  discernible  in  the  customs  and  superstitions  of 
the  common  people.  The  tales  of  fairies,  brownies,  and 
ghosts  which  still  circulate  in  civilised  lands,  and  are  told 
to  the  children,  were  once  part  of  a  system  of  religious 
beliefs  in  a  far  distant  past.  But  they  have  ceased  to 
play  any  part  in  the  religious  life  of  the  people,  and  only 
sentiment  keeps  them  alive.  Nevertheless,  if  some 
beliefs  do  not  survive  others  do ;  for  the  popular  mind 
clings  tenaciously  to  ideas  and  customs  which  entered 
deeply  into  the  life  of  former  generations.  Hence  we  find 
features  of  primitive  religion  persisting,  not  only  after 
the  rise  of  national  worships,  but  in  the  presence  and 
under  the  shadow  of  universal  religion.  It  may  conduce 
to  clearness  if  we  distinguish  two  forms  in  which  the 
phenomena  of  survival  may  be  seen  and  studied. 

(1)  Elements  of  primitive  belief  may  be  brought  into 
relation  with  a  more  developed  religion  without,  however, 
forming  organic  parts  of  its  structure.  Sentiment  would 
not  discard  the  old,  but  thought  could  not  fuse  the  new 
and  old  into  a  consistent  whole.  In  some  cases  this 
connexion  of  elements  of  earlier  and  later  origin  looks  not 
unnatural:  in  other  cases  the  result  is  peculiarly  incon- 
gruous. In  illustration  we  may  point  to  the  method  of 
preserving  a  place  for  the  primitive  spirits  alongside  the 
greater  gods  of  national  religion,  by  making  them  the 
servants  or  messengers  of  the  higher  deity.  The  nymphs 
become  the  creatures  of  Poseidon,  the  sea-god  of  Hellenic 
religion :  the  Maruts  or  wind-spirits  are  made  the  servants 
of  Indra,  the  storm -god  of  the  Vedas.  Zeus,  the  heaven 
god,  gave  his  protection  to  a  primaeval  tree  worship  when 
the  sacred  oak  of  Dodona  was  consecrated  to  him.  The 
sentiment  begotten  of  the  old  animal  worship  of  a  nomadic 
people  explains  the  peculiar  sanctity  of  the  cow  in  the 


SURVIVALS    IN   RELIGION  149 

developed  religion  of  Zarathustra.  In  a  like  way  we  may 
explain  the  association  of  particular  animals  with  some  of 
the  Hellenic  gods.  This,  too,  seems  to  be  the  reason  of  the 
grotesque  custom  seen  in  some  religions  of  depicting 
certain  gods  in  half-human  and  half-animal  forms.  In 
the  ancient  religion  of  Egypt  the  -god  Horus  has  the 
head  of  an  ibis,  Thoth  that  of  a  hawk,  and  Anubis  wears 
the  head  of  a  jackal.  What  in  an  after  age  passed  for  a 
kind  of  symbol  of  the  god  was  at  one  time  thought  to  be 
the  form  of  his  manifestation.  But  it  is  especially  in  the 
ritual  that  religious  survivals  are  to  be  found,  for  the 
ritual  is  always  the  oldest  part  of  a  religion.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  illustrate  this  point  in  any  detail.  Let  me 
remind  the  reader,  however,  of  the  practice  of  reciting 
prayers  and  liturgies,  the  original  meaning  of  which  has 
been  forgotten,  or  even  in  an  obsolete  language  which 
the  priests  themselves  do  not  understand.  Then  the 
frequent  use  of  stone  instruments  in  the  performance  of 
sacred  rites,  long  after  the  use  of  iron  has  become  common, 
is  an  interesting  illustration  of  survival  brought  about  by 
conservative  sentiment.  It  usually  is  the  case  that  the 
ritual  of  a  developed  religion  is  the  student's  best  guide  to 
the  primitive  system  of  beliefs  out  of  which  that  religion 
grew. 

(2)  In  the  instances  we  have  been  considering  the 
older  beliefs  are  brought  into  relation  with  the  later 
religious  system,  though  they  can  be  distinguished  from  it. 
In  the  second  form  in  which  the  phenomenon  of  survival 
presents  itself,  primitive  beliefs  and  practices  persist 
alongside  a  higher  religion.  They  do  not  blend  with  nor 
form  an  integral  part  of  the  higher  religion,  and  they  are 
not  consistent  with  it.  They  are  an  inheritance  from  a 
remote  past :  changes  in  the  structure  of  society  have  not 
obliterated  them,  and  they  live  on  in  virtue  of  the  power 
of  custom  and  sentiment,  and  through  the  appeal  which 
they  make  to  the  minds  of  the  ignorant  and  superstitious. 
So  the  old  spiritism  and  magic  linger  amid  an  alien  environ- 
ment, dear  to  the  simple  and  unlettered,  nearer  their 


150        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

hearts  than  the  greater  gods  of  national  religion.  We 
come  upon  these  lower  strata  of  religious  belief  underneath 
the  national  cults  of  ancient  Egypt  and  Eome;  and  the 
Babylonian  pantheon  rises  above  a  rank  and  vigorous 
undergrowth  of  spiritism  and  of  magic.  This  juxtaposi- 
tion of  religious  ideas  which  belong  to  very  different 
levels  of  culture  can  be  traced  equally  well  among  peoples 
of  the  present  day.  Turn,  for  example,  to  modern  India, 
and  you  will  find  side  by  side  nearly  every  phase  of 
belief,  from  refined  theism  and  pantheism  to  the  crudest 
animism.  "  There  has  been  a  loose  and  luxuriant  growth 
of  religious  fancies  and  usages ;  and  the  religion  has 
become  a  conglomerate  of  rude  worship  and  high  liturgies ; 
of  superstitions  and  philosophies,  belonging  to  very 
different  phases  of  society  and  mental  culture." l  Hence 
it  is  impossible  to  discover  in  Hinduism  a  coherent  system 
of  belief.  The  religion  of  the  peasant  often  remains 
uninfluenced  by  the  greater  gods  of  Brahmanism.  "He 
will,  it  is  true,  bow  at  their  shrines,  and  he  has  their 
names  sometimes  on  his  lips.  But  he  trusts  more  in  the 
host  of  godlings  who  inhabit  the  pile  of  stones  under  the 
sacred  tree  which  forms  the  village  shrine."2  If  we  go 
to  Burma  we  find  Buddhism  is  the  religion  of  the  people, 
and  their  religion  is  reflected  in  their  temper  and  life. 
But  Buddhism  in  Burma  was  superimposed  on  a  far 
older  animism,  and  this  ancient  spiritism  continues  to  live 
and  flourish.  To  the  Burman  the  forest,  the  mountains, 
and  especially  the  trees  are  alive  with  spirits  which  he 
terms  Nats ;  and  along  with  his  reverence  for  the  Buddha 
the  native  combines  a  wholesome  dread  of  offending  the 
Nats.8 

By  way  of  a  concluding  illustration  let  us  look  for  a 
moment  at  the  Hellenic  religion.  The  cult  with  which 
we  are  all  most  familiar  is  that  of  the  Olympic  gods,  the 
gods  who  live  in  the  poetry  and  art  of  Greece.  But  it 

1  Asiatic  Studies,  by  Sir  Alfred  Lyall,  second  series,  1889,  p.  292. 

8  W.  Crooke,  The  North  Western  Provinces  of  India,  1897,  pp.  244-245. 

1  The  Soul  of  a  People,  by  H.  Fielding  Hall,  1902,  p.  250  ff. 


SURVIVALS   IN   RELIGION  151 

has  been  shown  that  in  the  classical  period  there  was 
another  type  of  religion  which  claimed  many  worshippers. 
It  was  the  cult  of  the  Chthonian  gods,  the  gods  of  the 
earth  and  underworld ;  and  a  distinction  has  been  drawn 
between  the  two  cults.  The  Olympian  cult,  according  to 
a  recent  writer,  is  one  of  service,  and  the  Chthonian  one 
of  aversion,  or  of  avoidance  of  ills.1  For  example,  the 
Anthesteria  was  a  feast  to  the  ghosts,  the  /djpe?,  spirits  of 
disease  and  ills,  and  the  ritual  was  a  means  of  averting 
the  harm  they  might  do.  In  any  case  it  seems  clear  that 
the  Chthonian  religion  is  a  type  distinct  and  independent, 
and  preserves  the  elements  of  the  ancient  but  still  living 
spiritism  upon  which  the  Olympic  pantheon  was  super- 
imposed. Here  also  the  ritual  is  the  guide  to  the  student 
who  tries  to  trace  out  the  vestiges  of  the  ruder  religion 
behind  the  more  refined. 

The  foregoing  remarks  will  serve  to  show  that  the 
progress,  from  tribal  through  national  to  universal  religion, 
is  not  a  process  of  development  in  which  the  older  beliefs 
are  steadily  taken  up  by  the  later  faith  and  minted  anew. 
No  doubt  the  constant  tendency  of  advancing  culture  is  to 
suppress  or  modify  the  cruder  features  of  savage  belief. 
But  the  ideas  and  customs  of  the  immemorial  past  are 
gifted  with  a  tenacious  life :  if  much  is  taken,  much 
abides,  and  where  the  educated  laugh  the  simple  and 
unlettered  are  not  without  faith.  It  is  these  survivals 
which  help  us  to  trace  our  religious  lineage :  "  Thus  it  is 
that  savage  religion  can  frequently  explain  doctrines  and 
rites  of  civilised  religion.  The  converse  is  far  less  often 
the  case."  2 

On  the  whole  subject  we  may  conclude  that  society, 
in  its  religious  evolution,  does  outgrow,  if  only  slowly 
and  with  difficulty,  the  primitive  beliefs  of  the  past.  It 
will  do  so  more  completely  when  the  spirit  of  culture 
penetrates  all  classes  of  the  people.  It  cannot  be  said  that 
this  has  been  fully  accomplished  in  any  nation.  Nor  is 

1  Greek  Religion,  by  J.  Harrison,  p.  7  ff. 
a  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  357. 


152        BEGINNINGS   AND   GROWTH   OF    RELIGION 

there  any  religion  that  is  not  hampered  by  lower  beliefs 
which  do  not  belong  to  its  life,  and  which  impede  its 
progress.  The  most  developed  and  spiritual  religion  is 
Christianity,  and  yet  in  such  matters  as  the  doctrine  of 
the  Mass  and  reverence  for  relics,  we  see  that  a  large 
section  of  the  Christian  Church  has  never  liberated  itself 
from  magical  and  superstitious  notions.  Future  progress 
will  depend  on  the  gradual  elimination  of  such  ideas  and 
practices.  But  all  existing  religions  reveal  to  us  a 
complex  structure ;  they  are  built  up  out  of  diverse 
materials  which  cannot,  as  they  stand,  be  worked  into  a 
consistent  and  harmonious  whole.  And  it  is  a  testimony 
to  the  vitality  of  a  religion,  when  it  gradually  discards  the 
elements  which  are  foreign  to  its  nature,  and  strengthens 
and  develops  the  things  which  are  central  and  essential. 


CHAPTEK  III. 

CHAEACTEKISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  DEVELOPED 
EELIGION. 

WE  have  now  traced  the  evolution  of  religion  from  the 
primitive  stage  to  the  rise  and  spread  of  the  Universal 
Eeligions.  It  remains  for  us  to  examine  more  closely 
some  of  the  characteristic  features  of  higher  religion ;  and 
in  doing  this  it  will  be  best  to  follow  the  line  suggested  by 
our  discussions  of  the  psychological  basis  of  religion.  The 
religious  consciousness,  we  saw,  had  its  emotional, 
volitional,  and  intellective  aspects,  each  of  which  was 
essential,  although  one  element  might  be  more  prominent 
than  the  others.  Whenever  one  of  the  factors  predomi- 
nates to  any  marked  extent,  it  serves  to  give  a  special 
character  to  a  religion  or  to  one  of  its  phases.  At  the 
same  time,  with  the  growth  of  man's  spiritual  personality, 
there  is  a  development  and  a  refinement  of  all  the 
different  elements,  and  no  one  of  them  can  remain 
uninfluenced  by  the  progress  of  the  rest.  We  have 
therefore  to  consider  some  of  the  characteristic  ways  in 
which  feeling,  thought,  and  will  function  in  developed  and 
spiritual  religion.  I  begin  with  feeling. 

A. — THE  SPIEITUALISATION  OF  FEELING. 

The  central  importance  of  feeling  in  all  religion,  and  the 
dominance  of  the  emotions  in  the  early  forms  of  religion, 
have  already  been  pointed  out.  A  powerful  but  ill- 
regulated  affective  life  is  characteristic  of  man  in  the 
lower  culture,  and  finds  notable  expression  in  his  religious 

153 


154  ASPECTS    OF   DEVELOPED    RELIGION 

acts.  Fear  and  awe,  trust  and  hope  are  blended  in  early 
piety,  and  stress  of  feeling  liberates  itself  in  violent 
emotional  outbursts.  The  progress  of  culture  no  doubt 
tends  to  suppress  or  modify  the  exuberance  of  the 
primary  feelings,  and  gives  balance  to  the  affective  life. 
Yet  it  does  not  do  so  completely,  for  outbreaks  of  religious 
excitement — and  that,  too,  in  some  of  their  wilder  forms — 
recur  from  time  to  time  even  in  the  midst  of  settled  and 
civilised  societies.  For  example,  in  ancient  Greece  the 
phenomenon  of  \iavla,  or  religious  possession,  was  associated 
with  the  religion  of  Dionysus,  which  had  its  original  home 
among  the  wild  tribes  of  Thrace  and  found  its  way  south- 
ward. The  frenzy  of  those  celebrating  its  rites  was  a  trait 
of  the  Dionysiac  cult ;  and  while  Greek  culture  toned 
down  the  cruder  features  of  this  orgiastic  worship,  it  could 
not  altogether  obliterate  them.  A  like  reversion  to  an 
uncontrolled  emotionalism  took  place  in  the  later  Roman 
religion,  during  the  period  of  decadence  which  followed  the 
introduction  of  Eastern  worships  about  the  beginning  of 
the  second  century  before  Christ.  The  cults  of  Cybele, 
Attis,  and  Isis  were  connected  with  orgies  of  feeling  to 
which  the  old  Roman  religion,  sober  and  unenthusiastic, 
was  a  total  stranger.  The  mainstay  of  the  ancient  State 
Religion  was  patriotic  and  conservative  sentiment,  and 
when  this  grew  feeble  many  welcomed  the  advent  of 
extravagant  forms  of  worship  which  gave  free  play  to  the 
emotions.  There  is  a  fascination  in  extremes  of  feeling ; 
and  modern  social  progress,  bringing  increased  powers  of 
inhibition  to  the  individual,  has  not  been  able  to  save  men 
from  being  swept  away  by  the  tide  of  religious  excitement. 
There  is  an  element  of  truth  in  the  theory  of  a  recru- 
descence of  primitive  traits  in  modern  revivals.  Though 
appearing  within  a  Christian  environment,  and  appealing  to 
Christian  ideas,  the  revival  movements  which  from  time  to 
time  pass  over  a  country  are  attended  by  phenomena  which 
reveal  the  working  of  violent  and  elemental  feelings.  And 
they  owe  part  of  their  attractiveness  to  this  fact.  Sub- 
conscious processes  prepare  the  way,  and  at  the  psycho- 


SPIRITUALISATION   OF   FEELING  155 

logical  moment,  and  without  prevision  on  their  part,  men 
and  women  are  borne  away  by  a  flood  of  emotion.  At 
such  times  ordinary  religious  reserve  is  broken  down,  a 
psychical  infection  runs  through  the  crowd,  and  tense 
feeling  finds  utterance  in  songs  and  confessions,  in 
extravagant  joy  and  in  fits  of  weeping.1  Physical  collapse 
and  convulsions  sometimes  occur,  and  the  exuberance  of 
emotion  leaves  reactionary  effects  on  mind  and  body. 
That  the  '  revival '  has  higher  and  better  features  is  not 
in  dispute ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  it  is  commonly 
linked  with  phenomena  which  belong  to  a  lower  stage  of 
religion,  and  are  not  without  danger  to  the  higher  spiritual 
life. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  personal  development 
which  goes  with  social  progress  makes  for  mental  balance, 
restraint,  and  general  self-control.  The  structure  of 
civilised  life  demands  foresight  and  reflexion  from 
individuals :  mental  evolution  reacts  on  the  feelings,  and 
its  general  tendency  is  to  chasten  and  spiritualise  them. 
The  feeling-tone  of  modern  Christian  worship  is  inexplic- 
able apart  from  the  long  social  and  spiritual  development 
which  lies  behind  it.  Let  us  try  to  understand  how  this 
refining  process  is  brought  about. 

The  growth  of  religion  is  marked  by  an  increased 
definition  of  the  religious  object,  which  acquires  a  character  * 
and  traits  corresponding  to  man's  advance  in  personal  t 
consciousness.  The  forms  of  gods  and  goddesses  with 
determinate  qualities  replace  the  vague  and  elusive  spirits, 
and  their  worship  is  organised  in  fixed  ways.  The  cult- 
forms  become  a  recognised  and  elaborate  means  by  which 
men  hold  fellowship  with  the  deities  they  reverence,  and 
win  the  help  they  need  or  the  deliverance  they  desire. 
Moreover,  gods  endowed  with  a  personal  character  and 
tendencies  are  fitted  to  be  the  objects  of  higher  and  purer 

1  The  expert  evangelist  is  skilful  in  using  the  means  to  bring  about  the 
desired  emotional  atmosphere,  for  this  is  essential  to  his  success.  For 
some  relevant  remarks  on  this  point,  vid.  Ames,  The  Psychology  of  Religions 
Experience,  1910,  p.  266. 


156  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED   RELIGION 

emotions  :  and  the  well -organised  cultus,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  an  excellent  centre  and  rallying  point  for  the  emotional 
life  of  the  worshippers.  Through  the  systematised  worship 
of  the  state  or  the  religious  community  men  and  women 
have  their  religious  feelings  evoked  and  fostered  by  regular 
means,  and  acts  of  piety  are  associated  with  a  constant 
tone  of  feeling.  The  crude  displays  of  fear  and  joy  which 
went  with  primitive  religion  are  gradually  replaced  by 
more  settled  and  complex  emotional  dispositions,  and  these 
are  connected  with  their  appropriate  objects.  The  process 
is  made  possible  by  the  gain  of  a  richer  content,  alike  on 
~t  the  side  of  the  religious  subject  and  of  the  religious  object. 
The  formless  and  mysterious  spirit  is  dreaded,  but  the  god 
in  whom  man  recognises  the  counterpart  of  what  is  best 
in  himself  elicits  a  finer  emotional  response.  The  process 
by  which  the  feelings  are  organised  in  the  ethical  religions 
is  bound  up  with  the  growth  of  the  sentiments.  The 
emotions,  simple  and  complex,  are  the  materials  out  of 
which  the  sentiments  develop  and  upon  which  they  depend. 
Sentiments  are  organised  emotional  dispositions,  more 
diffused,  constant,  and  equable  than  an  emotion  which  must 
be  experienced  at  a  particular  time.  The  emotion  comes 
and  goes :  the  sentiment  abides,  and  denotes  a  permanent 
affective  disposition  towards  an  object.  Accordingly  the 
latter,  far  more  than  the  former,  reveals  the  trend  and 
aspiration  of  the  personal  history.  It  is  in  and  through 
the  blending  of  the  emotions  with  the  stable  disposition 
we  term  a  sentiment  that  man  organises  his  affective  life, 
and  brings  order  and  system  into  what  would  otherwise 
be  chaotic.1  The  value  for  the  religion  of  civilised  man 
of  this  constant  feeling-attitude  towards  religious  things 
and  acts  will  be  at  once  apparent.  Let  me  illustrate  this 
from  the  characteristic  religious  sentiment  of  reverence. 
The  more  elementary  emotions  of  fear,  of  wonder,  and  of 
awe  become  fused  into  the  emotion  of  reverence,  which  is 
relatively  a  more  complex  state.  But  reverence,  in  the 
form  of  an  emotion  evoked  on  specific  occasions,  gradually 

1  On  this  point,  vid.  McDougall,  Social  Psychology,  p.  159  ff. 


SPIRITUALISATION   OF   FEELING  157 

passes  into  a  permanent  feeling-disposition  of  the  religious 
subject,  and  qualifies  his  whole  attitude  to  the  religious 
object.  This  sentiment  interfuses  itself  with  sacred  persons, 
places,  and  acts  of  worship,  and  goes  to  constitute  the 
atmosphere  in  which  the  religious  spirit  lives  and  breathes. 
In  a  like  way  religious  gratitude,  which  was  a  definite 
emotion  experienced  on  account  of  some  good  vouchsafed 
by  the  deity,  in  spiritual  religion  is  transformed  into  a 
sentiment  that  denotes  a  constant  feeling-attitude  towards 
God.  With  the  development  of  mental  activity  sentiments 
are  further  generalised,  so  that  they  can  exist  apart  from 
a  specific  reference  to  concrete  objects.  There  are,  for 
instance,  sentiments  of  dutifulness  and  truthfulness.  At 
the  same  time  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  the 
association  of  sentiments  with  concrete  objects  is  essential, 
if  the  religious  feelings  are  to  gain  the  requisite  system  and 
coherency.  It  is  this  reference  to  concrete  objects  which 
makes  it  possible  for  the  affective  dispositions  of  the 
religious  man  to  function  as  an  orderly  whole.  The  system 
of  religious  objects  provides  the  basis  for  the  system  of 
religious  feelings. 

A  further  feature  in  the  evolution  of  the  emotions  and 
sentiments  has  been  put  in  a  clear  light  by  Mr.  A.  F.  > 
Shand,  to  whom  the  discussion  of  this  subject  owes  much.1 
The  sentiments,  or  organised  and  stable  dispositions  re- 
ferring to  objects,  in  their  turn  become  the  fixed  centres 
around  which  the  emotions  gather  and  for  which  they  act 
as  qualifying  predicates.  In  other  words,  when  a  constant 
sentiment  exists,  under  appropriate  conditions  it  will  serve 
to  evoke  an  emotion,  and  this  emotion  blends  with  and 
qualifies  the  sentiment.  One  can  hardly  overrate  the 
value  of  sentimental  dispositions  in  forming  a  centre  and 
support  to  the  more  spiritual  emotions.  Their  importance 
in  evoking  and  guiding  the  flow  of  religious  emotion  is 
unquestionable.  For  example,  the  emotions  of  joy  and 
sorrow,  penitence  and  gratitude,  awe  and  sympathy,  as 

1  Vid.  his  article  in  Mind,  N.S.,  v.  p.   203,  on  "Character  and  the      ^f. 
Emotions." 


158  ASPECTS    OF   DEVELOPED    RELIGION 

they  visit  the  worshipper  in  the  sacred  place,  depend  for 
their  peculiar  tone  on  the  underlying  sentiment  of  reverence 
which  they  qualify.  The  glow  of  spiritual  feeling  which 
the  Christian  experiences  as  he  bows  before  his  Maker  in 
the  sanctuary  is  not  due  to  some  simple  and  single  cir- 
cumstance. Behind  it  is  the  continuous  presence  of 
religious  sentiments :  these  form  the  steady  background 
upon  which  the  emotions  play,  like  the  shadows  that  flit 
over  a  landscape,  and  from  which  they  receive  their  specific 
tone.  It  is  plain  that  the  evolution  of  sentiments  out  of 
emotions,  and  the  further  complex  interplay  of  sentiment 
and  emotion,  give  its  richness  to  the  affective  life  of  the 
civilised  man :  they  invest  that  life  with  a  range  and 
variety,  with  an  inward  wealth  of  subtle  differences,  to 
which  savage  man  is  a  stranger.  Religion  gains  greatly 
thereby ;  and  the  higher  religions  strive,  by  the  skilful  use 
of  suggestive  symbols,  to  produce  the  requisite  spiritual 
atmosphere.  The  architecture,  furniture,  and  ritual  of 
temple  and  church  are  designed  to  provoke  that  tone  of 
feeling  which  fosters  the  spirit  of  worship  and  invites  the 
soul  to  rise  from  earth  to  heaven.  In  this  careful  em- 
ployment of  the  proper  means  the  Church  was  guided  by 
a  just  perception  of  the  value  of  the  end ;  for  if  sacred 
things  and  seasons  evoke  no  emotions,  if  sentiments  do 
not  gather  around  them,  the  spiritual  life  fails  of  freshness 
and  vigour,  and  worship  becomes  mechanical.  The  intimacy 
and  reality  of  religion  depend  very  much  on  the  way  in 
which  it  enters  into  our  affective  life :  the  colder  reason 
must  be  suffused  with  the  warmth  of  feeling,  if  piety  is 
to  flourish.  A  religion  which  is  in  bondage  to  the  emotions 
may  be  extravagant  and  sometimes  dangerous ;  but  a 
religion  of  pure  reason  is  not  even  possible.  In  a  healthy 
religious  mind  the  tendency  to  emotional  instability  is  kept 
in  check  by  the  character  which  has  been  developed  by 
the  rational  will.  Moreover,  the  constant  sentiments  inter- 
fused with  the  practical  religious  life  are  hostile  to 
emotional  excess.  The  growth  of  sentiment,  as  has  been 
said,  means  the  organisation  of  the  affective  and  conative 


SPIRITUALISATION   OF    FEELING  159 

life :  and  organisation  is  the  foe  of  the  spasmodic  and 
fitful.1 

The  function  and  value  of  feeling  in  religion  help  us 
to  understand  the  motives  which  underlie  some  of  its 
characteristic  manifestations  in  the  history  of  religion. 
The  glow  of  feeling,  intensifying  religious  experience,  seems 
to  bring  the  subject  into  closer  and  more  vital  union  with 
the  religious  object.  The  reflecting,  discriminating,  and 
comparing  activity  of  thought  appears  to  preclude  that 
intimacy  of  fellowship  with  deity  after  which  the  soul 
aspires. 

Thought  begins  and  ends  with  a  relation,  and  differ- 
ence is  essential  to  its  movement ;  but  the  heart  craves 
immediacy  of  experience.  The  endeavour  to  transcend 
the  ordinary  consciousness  in  order  to  reach  this  goal,  is 
the  common  feature  of  the  various  forms  of  mysticism 
which  occur  and  recur  in  the  history  of  religion.  The 
mystic  rebels  against  the  sober  restraints  and  the  hard 
limits  of  the  world  of  common  consciousness,  and  longs  to 
lose  himself  in  a  vaster  Being.  Mysticism  has  been  de- 
fined as  "  that  attitude  of  mind  which  divines  and  moves 
towards  the  spiritual  in  the  common  things  of  life."  2  But 
while  this  description  may  be  true,  it  is  so  general  that  it 
does  not  distinguish  the  mystical  from  the  higher  re- 
ligious consciousness.  It  is  right,  I  think,  to  say  with 
Dr.  Inge,  that  mysticism  has  its  root  in  the  dim  conscious- 
ness of  the  beyond,  which  is  the  raw  material  of  all  religion.3 
But  it  is  precisely  in  the  development  which  it  gives  to 
this  consciousness  that  the  specific  character  of  mysticism 
is  to  be  found,  and  its  contribution  to  religion  is  to  be 
valued.  We  can  distinguish  a  twofold  tendency  in  mysti- 

1  The  deleterious  effects  of  unregulated  emotion  in  religion  are  well 
known,  and  may  be  recognised  even  in  a  case  like  that  of  Bunyan.     In 
Grace  Abounding  he  speaks  of  experiencing  "such  strange  apprehensions  of 
the  grace  of  God  that  I  could  hardly  bear  up  under  it "  ;  and  he  confesses 
that  "if  that  sense  of  it  had  abode  long  upon  me  it  would  have  made  me 
incapable  for  business,"  p.  252. 

2  Granger,  The  Soul  of  a  Christian,  1900,  p.  41. 

8  Vid.  his  Bampton  Lectures  on  Christian  Mysticism,  1899,  p.  5. 


160  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED    RELIGION 

cism,  a  negative  and  a  positive  :  a  revolt  against  the  limita- 
tions of  sense  and  time,  and  a  deep  desire  for  fulness  and 
immediacy  of  divine  experience.  Mysticism  only  emerges 
on  the  higher  levels  of  religious  development,  for  it 
involves  a  sense  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  given  world  to 
which  savage  man  is  a  stranger.  If  we  are  to  find  a 
counterpart  to  it  in  primitive  religion,  it  would  be  in  the 
phenomenon  of  ecstasy ;  but  mysticism  is  larger  than 
ecstasy,  and  satisfies  desires  more  spiritual.  That  it  is 
no  accidental  phase  of  the  religious  consciousness  is  ap- 
parent from  the  way  in  which  mystical  phenomena  appear 
in  different  religions.  In  India,  the  Yogin  sought  by  fixed 
contemplation  to  induce  ecstasy,  and  by  a  tour  de  force  to 
transcend  thought  and  gain  the  spiritual  goal.  Hence, 
Yoga  was  the  means  to  the  highest  knowledge.  The 
Persian  Stiffs,  the  devotees  of  a  mystical  pantheism,  disclose 
a  tendency  alien  to  the  genius  of  Islam,  but  which  points 
to  a  need  of  human  nature.  The  orthodox  attitude  of  the 
followers  of  the  Prophet  to  Allah  was  an  abject  fear ;  but 
the  Suffs  conceive  the  bond  between  man  and  God  as 
love,  and  aspire  to  a  mystical  absorption  of  the  human 
soul  in  the  divine.  If  we  turn  to  the  later  movement  of 
Greek  thought,  we  discern  in  Plotinus  and  the  other 
Neo-Platonists  the  leading  traits  of  mysticism.  There 
is  the  same  dissatisfaction  with  the  ordinary  method 
of  knowledge,  and  the  same  demand  for  a  full  and 
rapturous  union  with  the  transcendent  One — eKcrracis  nal 
a7r\a)cri<;.1  To  treat  of  the  Christian  mystics  of  the  Middle 
Ages  and  afterwards  would  be  to  enter  on  too  wide  a  field. 
But  I  may  remind  the  reader  that  Mediaeval  Mysticism 
was  a  genuine  spiritual  movement  on  the  part  of  men 
wearied  with  the  barren  dialectic  of  the  Schoolmen,  and 


1  Under  Oriental  influences  the  older  Platonism  was  so  modified  by  the 
Neo-Platonists,  that  rational  insight  ceased  to  be  the  chief  quest,  and  an 
ineffable  fulness  of  mystical  feeling  became  the  supreme  goal.  Cp.  Plotinus, 
vi.  9.  4  :  yiverai  5t  ij  diropia  (irtpl  TOV  evbs)  /idXiara,  8n  fjL-rjdi  KO.T 
77  fftivcffts  tuelvov,  ftydt  /card  vbtjffiv  &airep  rd.  AXXa  vorjrd,  dXXd  /card 


SPIRITUALISATION   OF   FEELING  161 

craving  a  new  fulness  of  spiritual  experience.  The  double 
aspect  of  mysticism,  its  negative  and  its  positive  side,  is 
clearly  marked  in  the  Mediaeval  Mystics.  "  The  way  to 
ascend  to  God  is  to  descend  into  oneself,"  says  Hugo  of 
St.  Victor.  "  Leave  thy  body  and  fix  thy  eye  upon  the 
uncreated  light,"  cries  Albertus  Magnus.  The  identifica- 
tion of  the  mystic's  mind  with  God  has  been  declared  with 
startling  boldness  by  Meister  Eckhart :  "  God  and  I  am 
one  in  the  act  of  my  perceiving  Him."  "  In  this  simple 
and  intense  contemplation  we  are  one  life  and  one  spirit 
with  God,"  says  Euysbroek.  In  the  Theologia  Germanica 
and  in  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  the  necessity  of  turning 
away  from  self  and  the  world  to  attain  the  mystic  vision 
is  emphasised.  To  the  mystical  theologian,  visible  things 
serve  as  the  images  that  lift  the  soul  to  the  state  of 
exalted  feeling  in  which  conceptual  thought  is  transcended. 
Hence,  as  has  been  remarked,  the  tendency  of  Mysticism 
is  to  despise  historic  mediation,  and  to  treat  individuality 
as  a  vanishing  quantity.1  The  danger  in  Mysticism  is, 
that  it  weakens  the  rational  and  practical  side  of  religion, 
and  inclines  to  substitute  pantheistic  absorption  for 
spiritual  communion.  Its  strength  lies  in  its  perception, 
that  only  through  the  spiritualised  emotions  can  the 
depth  and  inwardness  of  religion  be  realised.  In  this 
sense  we  can  agree  that  there  will  always  be  a  mystical 
element  in  the  higher  religious  life. 

The  movements  termed  Pietism  and  Evangelicalism,  in 
the  forms  in  which  they  have  appeared  in  the  Eeformed 
Churches,  lay  stress  on  feeling,  but  also  accentuate  the 
personal  and  active  side  of  piety.  Like  Mysticism, 
Pietism  sets  little  store  on  the  theoretical  and  rational 
interpretation  of  religion,  and  it  would  agree  with  the 
thought  of  Pascal,  that  the  heart  has  its  reasons  of  which 
the  reason  knows  nothing.  But  it  emphasises  the  place 

1  Siebeck,  Religionsphilosophie,  pp.  314-15.     In  James's  Varieties  of  Re- 
ligious Experience  and  in  the  fitudes  d'Histoirc  et  de  Psychologic  du  Mysti- 
cisme  of  H.  Delacroix  (1908),  the  reader  will  find  suggestive  discussions  of 
the  part  played  by  subconscious  processes  in  mystical  experience. 
II 


162  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED    RELIGION 

of  Christ  as  the  object  of  religious  sentiment,  and  speaks 
rather  of  reconciliation  with  God  than  of  immediate  union 
with  Him.  A  trait  of  the  pietistic  and  evangelical  mind 
is  its  strongly  marked  emotional  attitude  to  sin  :  hence  its 
call  to  repentance  and  the  stress  it  lays  on  conversion. 
The  phenomena  of  conversion  are  often  associated  with 
feeling-experiences  of  a  pronounced  kind,  and,  like  the 
sudden  '  illumination '  of  the  mystic,  they  presuppose  the 
existence  of  subconscious  mental  processes.  These  pro- 
cesses are  at  work  in  the  preliminary  stage  to  conversion — 
a  stage  which  is  characterised  by  unrest,  spiritual  distress, 
and  anxiety.  This  stage  issues  in  a  climax,  and  then  the 
tension  is  suddenly  relaxed  and  is  followed  by  a  state  of 
inind  in  which  the  barrier  of  sin  is  felt  to  be  removed, 
and  the  depressing  sense  of  estrangement  from  God  has 
passed  away.  Joy  and  peace  now  reign  within.  The 
pietist  and  evangelical  interpret  the  conversion  process  in 
terms  of  the  orthodox  theology  of  the  Church,  and  the 
feeling-changes  are  explained  by  reference  to  a  given 
doctrinal  scheme.  The  value  of  this  experience  lies  in  the 
fact  that  the  emotional  upheaval  may  prove  a  dynamic 
influence,  enabling  the  individual  to  break  with  evil  habits 
and  rise  superior  to  former  sins.  Not  infrequently  the 
subject  of  these  emotional  changes  has  become  what  is 
termed  'a  changed  man/  and  gone  forth  to  lead  a  new 
and  better  life.  In  some  cases  the  tide  of  feeling  flows 
and  ebbs  without  seriously  influencing  the  individual  for 
good.  Pietism,  nevertheless,  exaggerates  the  importance 
of  a  stereotyped  form  of  religious  experience,  and  fails  to 
recognise  that  there  are  more  paths  than  one  to  the 
spiritual  goal. 

Our  general  conclusion  is,  that  spiritualised  feeling 
plays  an  important  part  in  giving  an  atmosphere  and  tone 
to  the  religious  life.  The  more  violent  forms  of  emotion 
are  indeed  of  questionable  worth  in  an  ethical  religion, 
and  they  are  inevitably  followed  by  a  reaction.  But  the 
constant  sentiments,  and  the  flow  of  feeling  which  inter- 
fuses itself  with  them,  lend  warmth  and  inwardness  to 


RELIGIOUS    DOCTRINES  163 

personal  religion.  While  thought  is  necessary  if  the 
religious  consciousness  is  to  have  meaning  and  universality, 
it  is  through  the  emotions  and  the  affections  that  religion 
is  made  an  individual  possession.  We  turn  now  to  con- 
sider the  rational  aspect  of  developed  religion. 

R — KELIGIOUS  DOCTRINES. 

In  the  evolution  of  religion  one  can  perceive  an  in- 
creasing influence  of  thought  upon  the  religious  life.  At 
every  stage,  indeed,  thought  is  present,  and  is  essential  if 
religious  feelings  are  to  be  significant.  But  in  the  be- 
ginnings of  religion  it  works  almost  instinctively,  and  only 
at  a  later  period  does  it  become  reflective  and  self-conscious. 
Thought  gives  definiteness  to  the  religious  object,  and 
generalises  the  religious  relation :  it  makes  explicit  the 
teleological  connexion  between  religious  acts  and  the 
religious  end.  Eeligion  therefore,  as  a  significant  attitude 
to  experience,  depends  on  the  activity  of  thought.  The 
broad  principle  on  which  the  mind  proceeds  in  this  activity 
is  that  of  analogy :  through  the  qualities  of  which  he  is 
conscious  in  himself  man  conceives  the  divine  object.  He 
makes  his  gods  in  his  own  image,  and  '  never  knows  how 
anthropomorphic  he  is.'  Animism  reveals  a  naive  use  of 
analogy :  it  is  a  man's  instinctive  projection  of  his  own 
life  into  the  world  around  him,  his  first  crude  impulse  to 
find  meaning  in  experience.  The  development  of  personal 
consciousness  carried  with  it  a  more  adequate  use  of 
analogy  in  religion  and  elsewhere,  and  we  can  see  this  in 
the  conscious  desire  for  explanation.  The  germs  of  re- 
flexion appear  when  people  are  driven  to  ask  themselves, 
Why  are  things  so  ?  What  is  their  explanation  ?  "  The 
Polynesian  surrounded  by  the  ocean,  asks  himself  how  his 
island,  his  world,  sprang  out  of  the  bosom  of  the  deep ; 
the  Hottentot  and  the  Kaffir  marvel  that  the  moon-god, 
their  great-grandfather,  although  at  times  lost  to  sight  ever 
revives,  while  his  children  must  die." *  By  an  extension  of 

1  Tiele,  Elements  of  the  Science  of  Religion,  vol.  ii.  p.  53. 


164  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED   RELIGION 

the  same  spirit  of  inquiry,  men  were  led  to  ask  how  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  came  into  being.  The  world  itself 
must  have  been  brought  into  being  by  some  such  process  as 
that  by  which  man  himself  produces  the  objects  he  wants.  So 
the  myth  became  the  cosmogony,  and  the  gods  functioned 
as  the  creators  and  builders  of  the  universe.  Greeks, 
Babylonians,  and  Hebrews  at  divers  times  and  in  various 
manners  set  forth  their  ideas  of  the  making  of  the  world ; 
for  the  framing  of  cosmogonies  was  a  widespread  custom, 
and  marked  the  transition  to  a  reflective  view  of  things. 
Yet  up  to  this  point  imagination  rather  than  thought 
prevails,  and  with  the  cosmogony  goes  the  legend.  The 
legend  is  a  story  which  gathers  round  a  god  or  religious 
hero,  setting  forth  his  origin  and  deeds.  There  may  be, 
and  there  often  is,  an  historical  core  around  which  the 
tale  is  woven — the  Buddha  legend  is  a  conspicuous 
instance.  But  the  idealising  process  has  been  at  work ; 
and  in  the  result  we  have  a  narrative  which  is  designed  to 
describe  the  past  so  as  to  elucidate  the  present.  The 
legend,  though  it  is  the  outcome  of  imaginative  thinking, 
has  a  value  that  does  not  depend  on  its  historic  accuracy. 
While  still  preserving  the  note  of  wonder  and  reverence 
needful  to  piety,  the  legend,  with  its  tale  of  the  origin  and 
doings  of  the  god,  helped  to  humanise  the  god :  it  brought 
him  out  of  a  remoter  world  into  the  realm  of  human 
interests  and  affections.  The  religious  story  served  to  fill 
in  the  outline  of  divine  forms  with  characteristics  drawn 
from  the  model  of  human  qualities. 

The  earliest  attempts  men  made  to  explain  the  things 
done  in  the  cultus  were  by  telling  stories  how  this  or  that 
act  came  to  be  practised :  hence  the  vogue  of  myth  and 
legend.  It  was  a  continuation  and  development  of  the 
same  tendency  which  gave  rise  to  religious  doctrines. 
Religion  is  always  present  as  a  system  of  acts  and  observ- 
ances ere  men  deliberately  try  to  find  a  raison  d'etre  for 
them.  In  a  like  way  language  always  exists  in  a  fully 
articulated  form  before  an  attempt  is  made  to  expound  the 
principles  of  grammar.  Every  experience  precedes  in  time 


RELIGIOUS   DOCTRINES  165 

the  attempt  to  understand  it.  The  desire  to  explain  is  an 
outgrowth  of  the  need  to  understand,  a  need  which  is  born 
of  the  exigencies  of  practical  life.  The  call  to  adjust  means 
to  ends  engenders  the  reflecting  spirit,  and  this  spirit 
continues  and  steadily  increases  in  importance.  Eeligion, 
which  embodies  the  values  man  reads  into  his  experience, 
especially  invites  his  intellectual  activity ;  and  through 
religious  doctrines  he  strives  to  invest  with  general  mean- 
ing, and  in  this  way  to  justify,  the  acts  he  performs  in 
worship.  What  his  forefathers  have  done  on  the  strength 
of  tradition  he  will  now  comprehend  as  the  expression  of 
a  truth.  After  particular  doctrines  are  evolved  and  obtain 
currency,  the  need  arises  of  connecting  them  together  and 
forming  them  into  a  coherent  whole.  Hence  in  highly 
developed  religions  theological  systems  arise  which  seek  to 
expound  the  value  and  meaning  of  these  religions  in  pro- 
positional  form.  Not  by  an  accident,  but  by  an  immanent  * 
tendency  of  the  religious  spirit  is  theology  evolved.  To 
borrow  an  image  from  Lotze,  theological  doctrines  are  like 
the  bones  of  the  body,  the  outcome  of  the  life-process 
itself  and  also  the  means  by  which  it  gives  firmness, 
stability,  and  definiteness  of  outline  to  the  animal  organism. 
No  universal  and  spiritual  religion  could  maintain  itself 
without  some  doctrinal  statement  of  the  principles  implied  , 
in  its  own  life. 

The  growth  of  religious  doctrines  then  presupposes  a 
living  religion  with  a  number  of  practical  beliefs  associated 
with  it.  On  the  advent  of  the  reflective  spirit  these 
beliefs  are  felt  to  require  explanation  and  more  exact 
formulation ;  and  in  the  case  of  a  missionary  religion  there 
is  the  necessity  of  stating  these  principles  in  a  form  in 
which  they  can  be  communicated  and  taught  to  others. 
But  religion  which  has  invoked  the  aid  of  reflective  thought 
finds  it  has  employed  a  very  independent  servant  who  has 
no  idea  of  working  within  narrowly-prescribed  limits.  The 
free  activity  of  reflexion  develops  doctrines  which  are 
doubtful,  or  appear  to  be  inconsistent  with  other  beliefs 
held  to  be  important.  A  familiar  instance  of  this  is  the 


166  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED   RELIGION 

crop  of  Gnostic  heresies  that  troubled  the  early  Christian 
Church,  and  compelled  it  to  draw  a  distinction  between 
what  was  heretical  and  what  was  orthodox  and  catholic. 
To  meet  the  perplexities  of  such  a  situation  it  was  natural 
to  put  forward  the  idea  of  an  authoritative  Church,  which 
could  discriminate  between  the  true  and  the  false,  and  set 
forth  the  true  in  a  satisfactory  and  valid  form.  So  arose 
the  conception  of  dogma,  or  doctrine  that  bears  the  stamp 
of  a  religious  society  or  Church.  In  the  case  of  the 
Christian  Church  its  approved  dogmas  were  held  to  be  the 
doctrines  which  are  believed  everywhere  and  always  by  all 
Christians — quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  db  omnibus 
creditur.  The  authoritative  formulation  of  the  dogmas  of 
the  Church  was  contained  in  the  Catholic  Creeds. 

It  is  intelligible  how  a  Church,  in  the  war  against 
heresy,  is  impelled  to  lay  the  greatest  stress  on  sound 
doctrine.  But  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  the  Christian 
Church  was  led  to  overrate  greatly  the  importance  of  the 
doctrinal  aspect  of  religion ;  and  it  went  so  far  as  to 
condemn  all  those  who  did  not  accept  its  whole  doctrinal 
system:  "Which  Faith  except  everyone  do  keep  whole 
and  undefiled,  without  doubt  he  shall  perish  everlastingly." 
Though  we  can  understand  how  the  Church  came  to 
make  these  demands,  it  is  hard  to  justify  them.  For  it 
is  a  historic  fact  that,  in  the  guise  of  dogma,  meta- 
physical speculations  were  offered  to  the  faithful  which 
were  but  vaguely  connected  with  the  facts  of  Christian 
experience.  Moreover,  the  outcome  of  this  movement 
was  the  exaggeration  of  the  intellectual  side  of  faith  at 
the  expense  of  the  volitional  and  emotional  aspects. 
Correctness  of  doctrinal  belief  was  made  an  outstanding 
test  of  religious  value,  and  the  results  were  far  from  happy 
for  the  later  Church.  Religion  eventually  became  anti- 
religious  in  its  zeal  to  extirpate  heresy.  Creed  cannot  be 
made  to  count  for  more  than  character  without  detriment 
to  the  inner  life  of  religion. 

The  problems  at  issue  have  been  set  in  a  clearer  and 
broader  light  in  modern  times,  when  the  evolution  of 


RELIGIOUS    DOCTRINES  167 

culture  has  confronted  the  ancient  creeds  with  the 
independent  developments  of  science  and  philosophy. 
Science,  philosophy,  and  theology  are  phases  of  the 
activity  of  the  human  mind ;  and  though  at  present  they 
do  not  yield  a  harmonious  world-view,  yet  we  know  that 
the  human  mind  cannot  ultimately  be  divided  against 
itself.  But  it  is  plain  that  no  progress  towards  uni- 
fication can  be  made,  so  long  as  theology  remains  a  rigid 
dogmatic  system  which  claims  to  be  exempt  from  criticism 
and  modification. 

One  good  result  of  the  situation  has  been  a  widespread 
desire  to  reconsider  dispassionately  the  function  and  value 
of  religious  doctrines  in  the  spiritual  life.  When  we 
regard  the  problem  from  the  psychological  and  historical 
standpoint,  we  can  see  that  their  importance,  if  real,  is  __ 
relative.  As  we  have  already  noted,  religious  doctrines 
are  the  outgrowth  of  the  religious  life :  no  historic  re- 
ligion has  ever  been  founded  upon  a  clear-cut  dogmatic 
system.  A  dogma  is  or  ought  to  be  the  interpretation  of  a 
spiritual  experience :  it  cannot  be  made  the  explanation 
of  that  experience.  But  experience  is  always  richer  than 
thought,  and  no  dogma  can  fully  express  the  secrets  of  the 
inner  life.  Moreover,  the  theologian,  unconsciously  some- 
times, and  sometimes  consciously,  in  the  interests  of  practical  ~ 
religion  has  worked  with  figures  and  images,  suggestive, 
no  doubt,  but  not  precisely  true.  Even  where  exact 
formulation  of  doctrines  is  aimed  at  the  figurative  mode 
of  representation  has  been  retained,  as  we  can  see  in  the 
legal  analogies  and  the  eschatological  imagery  of  the 
ecclesiastical  creeds.  If  the  theologian  is  disposed  to 
insist  on  the  perfect  accuracy  and  sufficiency  of  his 
images,  he  will  not  come  to  an  understanding  with  the 
philosopher.  In  these  circumstances  liberal  theologians  in 
our  own  day  have  proposed  that  the  symbolism  which 
obtains  in  the  cultus  should  be  extended  to  religious 
dogmas.1  The  dogma  on  this  view  would  cease  to  be  a 

1  The  function  of  symbolism  in  theology  has  been   recognised   by  A. 
Sabatier  and  Me'ne'goz,  and  among  philosophers  by  Lotze  and  Hoffding. 


168  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED    RELIGION 

scientific  formulation  of  a  spiritual  truth,  and  would 
become  a  figurative  expression  for  a  spiritual  content 
whose  value  lay  in  being  experienced.  Through  the 
recognition  of  the  office  of  symbolism  in  religion,  the 
religious  consciousness  is  brought  into  close  relation  with 
the  aesthetic.  At  the  same  time  the  thoroughgoing 
endeavour  to  reduce  religious  doctrines  to  symbols  would 
bring  with  it  difficulties  and  dangers  of  another  kind.  It 
is  very  doubtful  whether  a  symbolism  which  boldly 
proclaimed  the  inadequacy  of  all  religious  doctrines, 
would  maintain  that  degree  of  concord  in  conviction  and 
endeavour  which  is  necessary  to  an  institutional  religion. 
A  church,  at  any  rate,  would  not  hold  together,  if  its 
members  were  generally  agreed  that  all  formulations  of 
religious  truth  were  more  or  less  hypothetical.  So,  while 
it  is  true  that  there  are  dogmas  which  may  be  interpreted 
symbolically,  --  and  in  some  cases  are  perhaps  best 
interpreted  thus — it  is  not  likely  that  symbolism  can 
always  prove  a  sufficient  substitute  for  doctrine.  The 
important  thing  seems  to  be,  that  we  should  frankly 
recognise  the  dependence  of  religious  doctrines  on  religious 
experience,  and  be  ready  to  expand  or  modify  them  with 
the  growth  of  that  experience.  And  religious  experience, 
be  it  remembered,  develops  because  it  is  an  element  in, 
and  is  constantly  affected  by,  the  developing  culture  of 
the  age.  The  error  has  been  to  regard  a  dogmatic  system 
as  the  fixed  and  authoritative  basis  of  a  Church,  instead 
of  the  historic  and  growing  expression  of  the  Church's 
spiritual  life.  A  religion  without  doctrine  becomes  some- 
thing too  elusive  to  serve  for  a  bond  of  union.  But  religion 
is  only  a  doctrine  because  it  is  first  of  all  an  experience,  an 
experience  which  has  its  roots  in  life. 

In  an  earlier  day  Goethe  had  proclaimed  the  symbolic  element  in  human 
experience : 

"  Allea  Vergangliche 
1st  nur  ein  Gleichniss." 

And  Carlyle  repeated  the  lesson  in  his  own  way :  "  Various  enough  have 
been  the  religious  symbols,  as  man  stood  on  this  stage  of  culture  or  the 
other,  and  could  worse  or  better  body  forth  the  Godlike." 


WORSHIP  AND  THE  RELIGIOUS  LIFE          169 

0. — SPIRITUAL  WORSHIP  AND  THE  EELIGIOUS  LIFE. 

No  religion  has  existed  without  acts  of  worship. 
Some  form  of  cultus  is  essential  if  the  reverence  and 
devotion  which  are  characteristic  of  piety  are  to  be  main- 
tained and  fostered.  A  piety  which  does  not  express 
itself  in  action  is  shadowy  and  evanescent ;  and  beliefs 
which  are  not  acted  out  become  feeble  and  valueless,  like 
a  bodily  organ  atrophied  from  lack  of  use.  Worship  has 
the  function  of  giving  reality  to  the  religious  spirit :  it  is 
the  dramatic  representation  of  the  inward  feelings  and 
desires  of  those  who  worship.  As  man  becomes  more 
spiritual  he  seeks  more  spiritual  ways  of  worship.  The 
cultus,  which  is  the  focus  of  religious  life,  develops  with 
the  development  of  the  religious  consciousness,  and  gains 
in  scope  and  depth  of  meaning.  In  the  lower  religions, 
worship  is  almost  entirely  a  matter  of  specific  acts  duly 
performed,  and  small  importance  is  attached  to  the  frame 
of  mind  in  which  they  are  performed.  But  when  religion 
advances  and  takes  the  form  of  a  national  institution, 
worship  is  much  more  fully  organised,  in  order  that  it 
may  express  the  personal  relations  which  subsist  between 
man  and  his  gods.  In  the  legal  and  ceremonial  religions 
this  organisation  is  excessive,  and  the  inner  spirit  is 
sacrificed  to  the  multiplicity  of  observances.  The  universal 
and  ethical  religions  lay  stress  on  the  subjective  or  per- 
sonal side  of  piety  as  the  condition  of  spiritual  service ; 
and  while  worship  is  regarded  as  essential,  it  is  not 
reckoned  of  value  by  itself,  but  is  brought  into  close 
relation  with  the  conduct  of  life.  Worship  in  the  temple 
or  church  becomes  part  of  a  wider  service  continued  in 
the  world,  and  religion  itself  is  conceived  to  be  a  'way 
of  life'  or  a  'path  of  salvation/  The  service  in  the 
sacred  place  ceases  to  have  a  value  apart  from  and  in 
contrast  to  the  wider  service  of  an  obedient  will.  Spiritual 
religion  distinguishes  the  secular  from  the  sacred  in  a 
manner  that  national  religion  did  not  do ;  for,  by  laying 
emphasis  on  the  subjective  side  of  piety,  it  was  able  to  give 


170  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED    RELIGION 

prominence  to  the  conception  of  a  religious  society  over 
against  the  world.  Some  such  idea  was  necessary,  so  soon 
as  it  was  clear  to  man's  growing  spiritual  intelligence  that 
a  religion  of  purely  external  acts  was  neither  worthy  nor 
consistent.  If  it  is  only  the  outward  deed  which  can 
reveal  the  spirit,  it  is  only  the  spirit  which  can  give  value 
to  the  outward  deed.  This  recognition,  that  faith  and 
personal  piety  were  needed  to  spiritualise  worship,  was  of 
the  greatest  consequence.  And  it  carried  with  it  the 
perception  that  the  spirit  which  informed  worship  must 
also  pervade  life,  if  conduct  was  to  be  religious  in  the 
deeper  sense  of  the  word.  So,  while  spiritual  religion 
distinguishes  the  secular  from  the  sacred,  it  contains 
within  it  the  principle  by  which  the  difference  can  be 
overcome.  The  principle  is  the  inward  personal  life  of 
the  spirit,  which  realises  itself  by  passing  out  into  the 
sphere  of  man's  common  duties  and  making  them  the 
means  of  working  out  his  spiritual  ideal.  The  religious 
spirit  which  thus  transcends  the  opposition  of  sacred  and 
secular  transforms  the  whole  of  life  into  a  spiritual 
vocation,  and  renders  the  doing  of  the  divine  will  a  true 
worship.  Hence  the  religion  which  distinguishes  most 
clearly  between  the  Church  and  the  world,  at  the  same  time 
teaches  most  plainly  that  the  secular  can  be  made  the  means 
of  fulfilling  the  spiritual.  The  present  age  has  come  to  see 
that  a  religion  which  does  not  give  depth  and  meaning  to 
the  whole  of  life  is  wanting  in  reality  and  value. 

But  while  spiritual  religion  refuses  to  separate  worship 
from  the  religious  conduct  of  life,  and  even  finds  truth  in 
the  idea  that  a  man  reverences  God  by  doing  his  duty,  it 
nevertheless  does  not  resolve  worship  into  the  performance 
of  duty.  For  it  recognises  that  worship,  in  the  narrower 
sense  of  the  term,  fulfils  a  spiritual  function  in  man's 
existence:  nor  is  it  easy  to  believe  that  religion  could: 
maintain  itself  apart  from  any  cultus  and  by  ethical 
service  pure  and  simple.  For  example,  the  so-called 
Eeligion  of  Humanity  has  not  been  able  to  dispense  with 
a  cult,  and  indeed  emphasises  its  importance.  Nor  is  the 


WORSHIP   AND   THE   RELIGIOUS   LIFE  171 

need  of  a  cult  surprising  when  we  consider  the  normal 
demands  of  the  religious  spirit.  For  religion  is  more  than 
temporal  service :  it  is  temporal  service  illuminated  and 
inspired  by  a  supramundane  and  divine  ideal.  Spiritual 
faith,  in  its  essential  nature,  means  a  movement  of  the 
soul  away  from  the  seen  and  temporal  to  the  unseen  and 
eternal.  Hence  the  spirit,  enveloped  in  the  things  of 
sense  and  time,  must  nevertheless  keep  alive  within  it 
the  sense  of  its  lofty  vocation  and  its  transcendent  goal. 
As  long  as  religious  consciousness  postulates  a  Power 
above  itself  who  can  enter  into  helpful  relations  with  it, 
so  long  will  it  seek  in  specific  ways  to  confirm  itself  in 
the  possession  of  this  help.  The  needs  and  limitations  of 
ordinary  human  nature  prompt  men  to  seek  a  divine 
strength  to  sustain  them  in  the  fulfilment  of  their  higher 
calling.  In  spiritual  and  ethical  religion  prayer  has 
ceased  to  be  a  wonder-working  spell  or  an  efficacious 
ceremonial  form ;  nor  is  it,  as  in  the  religions  of  nature, 
the  expression  of  a  mere  desire  for  material  goods. 
Prayer  is  rather  a  converse  of  the  human  spirit  with  the 
divine,  a  communion  in  which  the  individual  yields 
himself  to  God  and  seeks  wisdom  to  know  what  is  best 
and  strength  to  do  what  is  right.1  The  postulate  of  the 
religious  mind  is,  that  the  soul  is  in  contact  with  a  wider 
spiritual  life  from  which  gracious  and  uplifting  influences 
proceed.  The  validity  of  this  postulate  does  not  fall  to  be 
discussed  at  the  present  stage.  But  we  note  the  fact 
that  the  prayer- state  is  generally  felt  to  be  a  genuine 
element  of  the  religious  life ;  and  this  no  doubt  because 
those  who  pray  are  inwardly  prompted  to  do  so,  and  find 
prayer  to  be  of  spiritual  and  practical  value.  The 
sincerely  religious  person  does  not  depend  on  rational 
arguments  for  the  efficacy  of  prayer :  he  justifies  it  to 
himself  experimentally,  and  believes  in  it  because  it  has 
helped  him.  His  standpoint  is  pragmatic:  he  applies 
the  test  of  working-value. 

1  It  is  of  course  true  that  prayers  of  a  lower  kind  persist  in  higher  forms 
of  religion,  and  various  influences  perpetuate  the  survival. 


172  ASPECTS    OF    DEVELOPED    RELIGION 

So,  too,  social  worship  is  practised,  because  it  is  felt  to 
be  a  means  of  inspiring  and  sustaining  the  spiritual 
consciousness  of  the  religious  society,  and  of  keeping  alive 
within  it  the  feeling  for  those  social  ends  which  are 
involved  in  the  nature  of  religion.  Hence  the  seeming 
paradox,  that  religion  must  be  individual,  and  yet  a  purely 
individual  religion  is  valueless.  Or,  as  we  should  rather 
put  it,  a  merely  individual  religion  is  not  religion  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  term.  No  man  lives  or  dies  to  himself 
only ;  and  the  spiritual  life  in  the  individual  demands  a 
social  medium  for  its  growth  and  fulfilment.  In  the 
worship  of  a  Church  his  need  of  sympathy  is  met  and  his 
religious  convictions  are  sustained.  For  the  cultus  is  the 
visible  expression  of  the  faith  of  a  religious  community 
and  the  corporate  confession  of  its  devotion  to  ideal  ends. 
Through  his  membership  in  a  Church  a  man  receives  the 
opportunity  as  well  as  the  stimulus  to  organise  his  life,  so 
that  it  shall  subserve  the  accomplishment  of  those 
spiritual  ends  whose  value  is  proclaimed  in  social  worship. 
With  the  development  of  human  culture  the  tendency  is 
to  supersede  the  older  notions  of  a  miraculous  or  magical 
efficiency  attaching  to  the  forms  and  ritual  of  worship, 
and  to  insist  instead  on  the  spiritual  and  ethical  value  of 
the  cultus  as  an  integral  part  of  the  religious  life.  There 
is  evidence  that  the  social  efficiency  of  a  religion  is  not 
maintained  in  the  absence  of  those  uniting  and  inspiring 
influences  which  flow  from  a  common  worship.  You 
cannot  take  away  anything  which  sustains  the  conscious- 
ness that  religion  is  a  living  bond  of  union  without  taking 
away  from  the  practical  value  of  religion.  Hence  that 
excessive  individualism  which  runs  into  sectarianism  mars 
the  working  power  of  a  church.  With  some  further  ques- 
tions which  here  suggest  themselves  I  will  try  to  deal  in 
the  following  section. 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  CHURCH      173 

D. — THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  KELIGIOUS  COMMUNITY. 

We  have  noted  how,  in  the  evolution  of  religion,  the 
religious  bond  of  union  is  gradually  transformed  into  a 
spiritual  relationship.  The  religious  society,  at  first  the 
clan  or  tribe,  afterwards  the  nation,  finally  becomes  a 
Church  or  free  association  of  those  who  are  united  by  a 
common  faith.  Not  by  the  tie  of  blood  or  by  the  right 
of  citizenship  are  men  made  members  of  a  Church,  but  by 
the  presence  in  them  of  a  religious  spirit  and  by  their 
self-dedication  to  spiritual  ends.  The  development  of 
the  conception  that  religion  was  a  living  spirit,  freely 
desired  and  personally  appropriated,  entailed  for  its 
consequence  the  further  idea  of  a  spiritual  community 
organised  to  realise  religious  ends  :  so  the  Church  marked 
itself  off  from  secular  society.  Both  Buddhism  and 
Christianity  show  us  the  phenomenon  of  the  rise  and 
growth  of  a  Church.  At  first  a  union  of  ascetics  and 
mendicant  monks,  the  Buddhist  Church  by  and  by 
became  a  more  complex  organisation  with  ritual  of 
worship,  distinction  of  priests  and  lay  members,  saints 
and  general  councils.  As  in  the  case  of  Buddhism,  the 
Christian  Church  had  its  source  and  inspiration  in  the 
life  and  teaching  of  the  Founder  of  the  religion.  The 
primitive  Christian  Churches  were  religious  unions  of 
those  who  professed  faith  ,in  Christ  and  freely  accepted 
the  obligation  to  follow  Him.  The  Pauline  Churches  were 
composed  of  persons  who  enjoyed  equal  religious  privileges, 
and  who  were  drawn  together  from  different  ranks  of 
society  by  the  same  faith  in  Christ  and  devotion  to  His 
service.  The  mark  of  the  Christian  was  inward,  not 
outward :  the  possession  of  the  spirit  of  Christ.  And 
this  in  the  end  is  the  truest  mark  of  a  Christian  Church : 
ubi  Christus,  ibi  ecclesia. 

The  Christian  Church  had  to  develop  its  organisation 
and  forms  of  activity  to  meet  the  tasks  which  lay  to  its 
hand  when  it  became  the  Church  of  the  Empire.  The 
simple  fellowship  of  the  apostolic  days  was  transformed 


174  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED   RELIGION 

into  a  complex  and  graduated  system,  whose  members 
discharged  manifold  offices  and  whose  heads  pursued 
far-reaching  ends.  But  in  the  Mediaeval  Church  we 
note  that  progress  at  various  points  has  ceased  ;  develop- 
ment has  even  passed  into  a  retrograde  movement  which 
led  men  back  to  a  stage  which  Universal  Religion  had 
transcended.  Jurisdiction  in  matters  secular  as  well  as 
sacred  was  claimed  for  the  Church  on  the  ground  of  an  out- 
ward authority  mechanically  transmitted  to  the  successors 
of  Christ  and  the  apostles  ;  a  great  priesthood  flourished 
who  were  declared  to  be  the  necessary  mediators  between 
man  and  God  ;  and  the  rites  and  sacraments  of  religion 
were  invested  with  magical  efficacy.  The  whole  process 
was  in  the  direction  of  externalising  and  mechanising 
religion,  and  the  freedom  and  inwardness  of  personal  piety 
were  sacrificed  to  a  rigid  and  oppressive  institutional 
system.  Obedience  to  an  institution  had  been  converted 
into  a  bondage  destructive  of  that  freedom  of  the  spirit 
which  is  a  note  of  a  truly  spiritual  religion.  The 
Reformation  became  an  urgent  necessity,  and  it  rescued 
the  individual  from  his  servitude  to  the  rule  of  the 
Church.  Its  proclamation  of  the  rights  and  privileges  of 
faith,  which  was  a  free  act  of  the  individual  soul,  once 
more  brought  men  to  the  standpoint  of  spiritual  religion. 
And  the  doctrine  of  the  universal  priesthood  of  believers, 
in  denying  the  Romish  conception  of  priesthood,  at  the 
same  time  reaffirmed  the  principle  which  lay  at  the  root 
of  Universal  Religion, — the  principle  that  religion  has  its 
centre  in  the  inner  life  of  individuals  and  is  personally 
and  freely  realised.  Moreover,  a  needed  change  in  the 
conception  of  the  Church  was  introduced  by  the  Reformers, 
and  they  saw  themselves  obliged  to  distinguish  between 
the  visible  and  invisible  Church.  The  error  of  the  Romish 
theologians  lay  in  claiming  for  the  former  what  was  due 
only  to  the  latter.  Yet  the  distinction  is  not  a  hard 
and  fast  one  :  the  two  conceptions  melt  into  one  another. 
The  one  represents  the  truth  or  ideal  nature  of  the  Church, 
and  the  other  its  imperfect  existence-form ;  the  latter  is 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  CHURCH      175 

related  to  the  former  like  the  body  to  the  soul.  The 
value  of  the  conception  of  an  invisible  Church  lies  in  the 
idea  which  it  expresses,  that  the  true  and  perfect  Church 
is  never  a  present  fact  but  an  ideal  to  be  realised.  The 
inference  from  the  doctrine  of  the  Eeformers  is,  that  a 
Church  ought  to  be  a  religious  body  free  to  work  out, 
without  external  hindrances,  its  own  immanent  ideal. 
Outwardly  conditioned  the  historic  Church  must  be  by 
the  fact  of  its  existence  within  the  structure  of  civil 
society ;  but  none  the  less  the  line  of  its  spiritual 
development  must  be  self-imposed,  not  imposed  from 
without. 

To  some  modern  thinkers  it  has  seemed  that  the 
Church  as  an  institution  is  destined  to  pass  away. 
Eichard  Eothe  believed  that  the  Church  would  finally 
be  absorbed  in  the  spiritualised  state,  an  optimistic  fore- 
cast which,  it  must  be  confessed,  the  conditions  and 
tendencies  of  modern  life  do  little  to  justify.  The  Dutch 
theologian  Eauwenhoff  thought  the  Church  was  inseparably 
linked  to  what  he  called  "  supernaturalism,"  and  the  day 
of  the  supernatural  having  passed,  the  idea  of  the  Church 
will  be  superseded  by  that  of  the  religious  society.1 
Guyau,  in  his  L'Irreligion  de  VAvenir,  takes  a  view  still 
more  extreme.  He  looks  for  a  time  in  the  future  when 
all  notions  of  union  in  worship  will  be  abandoned,  and 
there  will  be  a  general  dissolution  of  all  dogmatic  beliefs.2 
This  will  no  doubt  be  the  case  if  the  day  comes  when 
men  cease  to  demand  a  meaning  for  existence  and  a 
satisfying  end  to  their  endeavours,  when  they  are  fully 
content  with  the  seen  and  present  world  and  desire 
nothing  beyond  it.  But  the  spirit  of  religion  seems  too 
deeply  rooted  in  the  constitution  of  human  nature  to 
encourage  such  an  expectation.  History  teaches  us  that, 
though  the  spirit  of  religion  in  one  age  be  depressed 
beneath  the  burden  of  secular  interests,  it  victoriously 
reasserts  itself  in  another.  The  one  thing  religion  does 

1  ReligionspMosophie,  1889,  p.  607. 
*  Op.  cit.  p.  323  ff. 


176  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED   RELIGION 

not  do  is  to  vanish  away,  leaving  men  well  satisfied  to 
take  the  horizon  of  their  natural  existence  for  the  term  of 
every  hope  and  every  desire.  And  so  long  as  religion  is 
a  real  motive  in  individual  lives,  so  long  will  a  spiritual 
organisation  or  Church  be  necessary  to  maintain  piety  and 
promote  religious  ends.  These  ends  are  social  as  well  as 
individual,  and  they  cannot  be  attained  by  isolated  and 
individual  efforts.  Where  an  individual  is  powerless  a 
great  organisation  is  irresistible.  Hence  religion  has  to 
preserve  its  institutional  form,  in  order  that  it  may  unite 
and  direct  the  energies  of  many  wills  towards  the  attain- 
ment of  one  great  end. 

When  we  look  to  the  actual  working  of  religion  we 
recognise  how  closely  the  personal  and  social  factors,  the 
individual  and  the  Church,  depend  on  each  other.  The 
collective  faith  of  the  Church  lends  stability  and  assurance 
to  the  faith  of  the  single  soul,  and  man  becomes  a  prey  to 
doubts  when  he  can  find  no  support  for  his  own  beliefs  in 
the  beliefs  of  others.  "My  belief,"  said  Novalis,  "has 
gained  infinitely  to  me  from  the  moment  when  another 
human  being  has  begun  to  believe  the  same."  The  Church 
thus  supports  the  faith  of  the  individual,  and  throughout 
the  changing  history  of  many  generations  maintains  the  con- 
tinuity of  religious  tradition  and  experience.  The  Church 
supplies  an  atmosphere  which  encompasses  the  child  :  it 
gradually  communicates  to  him  as  he  grows  up  a  body  of 
religious  beliefs :  and  it  holds  before  him  in  later  years 
spiritual  ideals  of  conduct.  It  is  a  constant  and  shaping 
influence  upon  the  individual  mind  and  will,  widening  a 
man's  spiritual  horizon  and  impressing  on  him  the  value 
of  ideal  ends.  The  Church  makes  it  possible  for  the  men 
of  each  new  age  to  face  the  problems  of  the  present 
enriched  by  the  spiritual  wisdom  of  the  past.  The 
ordinary  person  who  separates  himself  entirely  from 
religious  institutions  is  prone  to  decline  to  a  lower  level 
of  interests,  and  to  be  led  captive  under  the  tyranny  of 
secular  things.  Whatever  be  the  defects  of  the  historic 
Church — and  they  are  no  doubt  many — it  at  least  urges 


THE   INDIVIDUAL   AND   THE   CHURCH  177 

on  men  the  truth  that  they  are  more  than  "  thriving 
earthworms,"  for  their  destiny  lies  beyond  this  mundane 
order  of  things.  The  danger  has  been,  and  still  is,  that 
the  institutional  side  of  religion  presses  so  heavily  on 
individuals  that  their  faith  is  a  traditional  and  unverified 
belief  rather  than  a  personal  conviction,  free  and  spiritual. 
Kolilerglauben  is  not  a  monopoly  of  the  Eoman  Catholic 
Church  ;  for  in  all  Churches  men  and  women  are  to  be  found 
whose  religion  is  an  inheritance  instead  of  a  deliberate 
and  self-conscious  attitude  to  life.  A  very  clear  and 
dispassionate  thinker  has  set  on  record  the  following 
opinion :  "  Probably  there  never  was  a  time  when  the 
amount  of  beliefs  held  by  an  average  educated  person, 
undemonstrated  and  unverified  by  himself,  was  greater 
than  it  is  now."1  And  what  is  a  general  tendency  in 
other  departments  of  knowledge  is  likewise  present  in  the 
sphere  of  religion.  There  are  certainly  many  to-day, 
though  perhaps  not  so  many  as  in  former  days,  whose 
religion  has  been  gained  in  a  way  almost  as  instinctive 
and  mechanical  as  their  language :  it  is  illuminated  by  no 
personal  vision,  it  is  the  issue  of  no  inner  struggle.  It  is 
an  inheritance  they  have  acquired  because  they  could  not 
help  it ;  a  creed  they  are  not  disposed  to  doubt,  because 
they  have  never  examined  it.  On  the  other  side  we 
have  to  set  the  fact  that  there  are  men  in  every  society 
who  are  deeply  interested  in  the  religious  problem,  and 
who  are  striving  earnestly  to  appreciate  rightly  the 
function  and  value  of  religion  in  the  individual  and 
historic  life. 

While  institutional  religion  is  the  stable  background, 
personal  religion  is  the  factor  which  makes  for  progress. 
Institutional  religion  can  maintain  itself  for  long  through 
the  sheer  momentum  of  its  former  course ;  it  cannot 
maintain  itself  permanently  if  religion  ceases  to  be  vital 
in  individuals.  In  the  personal  consciousness  the  need 
of  reform  and  progress  becomes  vividly  felt,  and  through 
the  individual  it  receives  expression  in  speech  and  action. 

1  Vid.  the  Memoir  of  the  late  Professor  H.  Sidgwick,  p.  609. 
12 


178  ASPECTS   OF   DEVELOPED   RELIGION 

Hence,  through  the  reaction  of  personal  wills  on  the 
institutional  ground,  religion  develops  with  the  developing 
life  of  society.  The  decline  of  personal  religion  is  always 
the  sure  herald  of  a  general  spiritual  decadence,  for  it 
betokens  the  advent  of  a  formal  religion  from  which  the 
quickening  spirit  has  fled.  On  the  other  hand,  the  excessive 
predominance  of  the  subjective  factor  stimulates  the  rise 
of  sects,  or  leads  to  a  wide  unsettlement  of  mind  which 
may  pass  into  scepticism.  An  institutional  religion  which 
has  not  the  strength  to  overcome  these  individualistic 
movements,  or  at  least  to  control  them,  must  in  the  long 
run  fall  a  prey  to  a  process  of  disintegration. 

The  cause  of  spiritual  progress,  therefore,  will  be  best 
served  by  the  healthy  interaction  of  the  personal  and 
social  factors.  The  over  accentuation  of  one  of  them  may 
indeed  be  an  advantage  at  a  particular  period  in  order  duly 
to  emphasise  some  urgent  need.  The  very  exaggeration 
of  a  tendency  will  arouse  people  to  the  consciousness  of 
a  truth  which  they  had  begun  to  forget,  or  had  failed  to 
realise.  A  stable  equilibrium  of  elements  does  not  seem 
to  be  a  constant  feature  in  any  department  of  human 
activity ;  and  advance  more  often  takes  place  through 
oppositions  and  reactions  than  by  a  peaceful  and  harmonious 
development.  Good  Hegelians  dwell  on  the  power  of  the 
negative ;  and  we  may  admit  that  there  is  a  kind  of 
dialectic  in  experience,  for  the  human  spirit  refuses  to 
rest  in  any  partial  fulfilment  of  itself  and  strives  after  a 
complete  and  satisfying  consciousness.  In  religion  the 
vitality  of  both  factors,  the  individual  and  the  social,  is 
the  pledge  that  the  exaggeration  of  one  of  them  will  in 
due  season  elicit  a  corresponding  reaction,  and  lead  ulti- 
mately to  a  readjustment  on  a  higher  level.  If  religion 
is  to  conserve  its  value,  it  must  preserve  its  continuity 
with  the  past  and  show  itself  capable  of  developing  in 
the  future.  For  religion  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  historic 
life ;  and  if  you  tear  the  spiritual  plant  from  its  root  in 
the  past  and  place  it  in  an  artificial  environment,  it  will 
speedily  wither  away.  But  the  mere  inheritance  of  a 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  CHURCH     179 

continuous  life  will  avail  little  for  religion  or  for  any 
other  institution,  if  that  life  does  not  expand  to  meet 
the  wants  of  a  growing  world.  Human  culture  is  a 
developing  whole,  and  religion,  as  an  element  in  that 
whole,  must  develop  in  order  to  live.  These  conditions 
are  only  satisfied  when  the  social  and  personal  factors 
freely  interact  to  realise  the  spiritual  ideal. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EELIGION:  ITS  ESSENTIAL  NATUKE  AND 
EELATIONS. 

A. — DEFINITION  AND  SPECIFIC  CHARACTER. 

IN  an  earlier  chapter  we  made  reference  to  the  problem 
involved  in  the  definition  of  religion.  But  we  postponed 
the  fuller  consideration  of  the  question  until  we  had 
made  some  study  of  the  history  and  working  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  A  study  of  the  kind  was  pre- 
supposed in  any  adequate  attempt  to  exhibit  the  essential 
nature  of  religion ;  for  only  in  the  light  of  knowledge 
gained  in  this  way  is  it  possible  to  distinguish  what  is 
substantive  from  what  is  accidental  and  adventitious.  We 
have  now,  however,  come  to  a  point  when  we  can  profitably 
reconsider  the  matter  and  try  to  form  some  conclusion. 
With  the  general  facts  of  religion  before  us,  and  interpreted 
from  the  psychological  point  of  view,  we  may  endeavour 
to  make  clear  what  is  specific  and  essential  in  religion  as 
contrasted  with  other  forms  of  culture.  A  word  of  caution 
will  not  be  out  of  place  here  against  introducing  speculative 
conceptions  of  the  nature  of  religion  into  its  definition. 
Our  concern  at  present  is  with  the  nature  of  a  historic 
phenomenon.  In  any  final  interpretation  of  the  meaning 
of  religion,  metaphysics  must  not  be  excluded :  but  it  is 
important  that  the  image  we  form  of  religion  should  in 
the  first  instance  be  formed  on  the  basis  of  its  psychology 
and  history,  so  that  the  truth,  as  far  as  possible,  may  show 
in  its  own  light.  The  psychological  view  of  religion  is 
not  final,  but  it  ought  not  to  be  merged  in  a  speculative 

180 


DEFINITION   OF    RELIGION  181 

theory  of  the  spiritual  life.  Nor  should  we  take  it  for 
granted  that  the  latest  forms  of  religion  alone  give  us 
the  key  to  its  meaning.  This  at  least  is  not  true  without 
qualification,  and  it  implies  a  conception  of  religious 
development  which  it  is  better  not  to  assume. 

When  we  keep  in  mind  the  psychological  factors  of  the 
religious  consciousness  and  the  way  in  which  they  work, 
some  definitions  of  religion  strike  us  by  their  inadequacy 
and  onesidedness.  We  find  perhaps  that  they  are  appli- 
cable to  certain  stages  of  religion,  but  not  to  others,  or 
that  they  leave  out  what  is  important.  In  his  Science  of 
Religion,  Max  Miiller  termed  religion  "a  mental  faculty 
or  disposition  which  enables  man  to  apprehend  the  infinite." 
Yet  this  definition  will  not  apply  naturally  to  primitive 
religions,  and  there  is  much  in  developed  religion  of  which 
it  takes  no  account.  Prof.  E.  B.  T/ylor,  in  his  Primitive 
Culture,  gives  as  a  minimum  definition  "  a  belief  in  spiritual 
beings,"  which  is  at  least  widely  applicable,  though  it 
omits  a  good  deal.  A  more  adequate  definition  is  that 
of  Prof.  Menzies  in  his  History  of  Religion :  "  The  worship 
of  spiritual  beings  from  a  sense  of  need."  On  the  other 
hand,  when  Hoffding,  in  his  Beligionsphilosophie,  describes 
religion  as  "  faith  in  the  conservation  of  value,"  he  rather 
offers  us  a  philosophical  conception  of  the  ultimate  meaning 
of  religion  than  denotes  what  it  is  in  its  actual  working. 
A  good  definition  can  only  emerge  after  a  careful  and 
dispassionate  study  of  the  facts  in  their  fulness  and  variety. 
Now  an  examination  of  the  phenomena  makes  it  plain 
that,  if  we  are  to  say  what  religion  is,  we  must  take 
cognisance  of  its  double  aspect.  It  is  a  process  which 
has  two  sides,  an  inner  and  an  outer :  from  one  point  of 
view  it  is  a  state  of  belief  and  feeling,  an  inward  spiritual 
disposition ;  from  another  point  of  view  it  is  an  expression 
of  this  subjective  disposition  in  appropriate  acts.  Both 
aspects  are  essential  to  the  nature  of  religion,  and  they 
act  and  react  on  one  another  in  the  process  of  spiritual 
experience.  Consequently  any  definition  which  takes 
account  of  only  one  of  the  sides  must  be  judged  defective. 


182        RELIGION:    ITS   NATURE   AND    RELATIONS 

Under  this  category  would  fall  Cicero's  explanation  of 
religiosi  as  those  qui  omnia  quoc  ad  cultum  deorum  pertinent 
diligenter  retrectant :  for  in  this  performance  the  religious 
disposition  may  be  lacking.  Still  more  onesided  is  the 
definition  which  has  recently  been  proposed  by  M.  Salomon 
Reinach :  "  A  body  of  scruples  which  act  as  an  obstacle 
to  the  free  exercise  of  our  faculties." *  We  can  safely 
say  that  to  identify  religion  with  a  system  of  taboos  is 
to  ignore  what  is  most  valuable  in  it,  and  to  select  a 
subordinate  feature  and  call  it  the  whole.  You  cannot 
do  justice  to  the  nature  of  religion  by  trying  to  reduce 
it  to  the  magic  and  superstition  which  gather  round  its 
beginnings.  Much  more  adequate  is  Pfleiderer's  statement 
of  the  essence  of  religion :  "  The  direction  of  the  will  which 
corresponds  to  the  idea  of  the  Deity."  2  Yet  to  our  thinking 
he  wrongly  denies  that  feeling  belongs  to  the  essence  of 
religion,  though  he  somewhat  inconsistently  admits  that  it  is 
a  note  of  the  actual  presence  of  religion.  A  good  definition 
of  religion  must  contain  some  reference  to  all  the  psychical 
factors  which  operate  together  in  religious  experience. 

The  remark  is  frequently  made  by  writers  who  have 
sought  to  define  religion,  that  its  manifold  and  widely 
different  historic  forms  constitute  a  serious  difficulty. 
They  find  themselves  confronted  with  the  dilemma  of  a 
definition  so  wide  that  it  has  little  meaning,  or  so  narrow 
that  it  does  not  cover  all  the  facts.  For  example,  the 
primitive  Nature-religions  and  Buddhism  lie  so  far  apart 
that  it  is  hard  to  embrace  them  in  a  single  conception. 
If  we  proceed  by  eliminating  specific  differences  in  order 
to  reach  a  common  ground,  we  seem  to  come  back  to  a 
colourless  residuum  rather  than  a  constitutive  principle. 
A  definition  which  applied  as  fully  to  Fetishism  and 
Totemism  as  to  Buddhism  and  Christianity  would  hardly 
convey  a  clear  idea  of  what  religion  really  was.  A  perfect 
verbal  definition  framed  on  these  lines  is  not,  I  think, 
likely  to  be  achieved,  and  it  would  be  labour  lost  to  try  to 

1  Orpheus  :  Histoire  gene'rale  des  Religions,  p.  4. 

2  Religionsphilosophie,  3rd  ed.  p.  329. 


DEFINITION   OF   RELIGION  183 

devise  one.1  In  dealing  with  the  question  two  considera- 
tions should  be  kept  in  mind.  There  are,  in  the  first 
place,  features  in  every  religion  which  do  not  belong  to 
the  substance  or  essence  of  religion,  and  we  may  on  this 
account  disregard  them.  Thus  there  is  much  in  the  details 
of  religious  doctrine  and  in  modes  of  worship  which, 
though  it  may  cast  light  on  a  particular  phase  of  religion, 
does  not  help  to  determine  the  nature  of  religion  as  a 
whole.  The  latter  is  something  more  profound  and 
enduring,  and  finds  expression  in  a  variety  of  forms.  In 
the  second  place,  we  are  not  justified  in  supposing  that  the 
whole  essential  nature  of  religion  is  revealed  in  its 
simplest  and  most  primitive  forms.  The  motives  and 
impulses  out  of  which  religion  issues  will  be  found,  it  is 
true,  even  in  its  beginnings.  But  all  that  man  seeks  and 
realises  in  religion  is  not  apparent  from  the  first,  and  only 
becomes  explicit  in  the  later  stages  of  development.  For 
instance,  the  specific  character  of  religious  goods,  or  the 
significance  of  worship,  will  not  be  adequately  gathered 
from  the  study  of  tribal  spiritism  or  fetishism.  As  man 
advances  in  personal  life,  he  reveals  more  clearly  how 
much  he  seeks  and  hopes  to  find  in  his  religion.  Hence 
a  definition  which  endeavours  to  bring  out  what  is 
characteristic  of  religion  in  the  light  of  its  whole  history 
will  undoubtedly  state  more  than  is  patent  in  the  crude 
religions  of  nature.  Or  at  least  it  will  set  forth  explicitly 
features  which  are  only  dimly  anticipated,  or  presented  in 
germ,  at  the  primitive  level. 

A  definition  of  religion  should  bring  out  the  genetic 
principles  or  motives  which  underlie  the  development  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  It  was  Aristotle  who  made  it 
plain  that  a  definition  must  not  merely  describe  the  facts, 
but  should  also  state  the  cause  or  reason.2  In  defining 

1When  Runze  (KatecMsmus  der  ReligionsphilosopMe,  1901,  p.  215) 
defines  religion  as  Sammlung  des  Gemiites,  in  seeking  to  be  comprehensive  he 
has  lost  sight  of  what  is  characteristic. 

2  ou  ycip  i*.bvov  rb  6Vi  Set  rbv  bpiaTiKbv  \6yov  6f]\ovv  .  .  .  d\\d  Kal  rty  alrlav 
Kal  tpQalveadou,  De  Anima,  ii.  413a. 


184     RELIGION:   ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

religion,  then,  it  is  necessary  to  indicate  the  psychical 
factors  and  the  motives  which  operate  through  them  in 
making  religion.  These  factors,  as  we  have  seen,  are 
emotive,  volitional,  and  cognitive;  for  religion  is  at  once 
a  belief,  a  feeling,  and  a  practical  activity  of  the  will. 
There  is,  however,  the  danger  of  overloading  a  definition 
by  introducing  into  it  a  reference  to  all  the  shades  of 
psychical  process  which  seem  to  be  present  and  the 
qualifications  which  seem  desirable :  we  must  be  content  to 
give  the  main  features.1  Keeping  these  points  in  mind, 
we  suggest  the  following  for  a  tentative  definition  of 
religion :  "  Man's  faith  in  a  power  beyond  himself  whereby 
he  seeks  to  satisfy  emotional  needs  and  gain  stability  of 
life,  and  which  he  expresses  in  acts  of  worship  and 
service."  The  cognitive  side  of  the  religious  consciousness 
is  represented  by  faith,  and  faith  is  stimulated  by  emotion 
and  posits  the  object  which  will  satisfy  the  needs  of  the 
inner  life.  One  of  the  most  urgent  and  constant  of  man's 
needs  is  that  which  is  expressed  in  the  desire  for  self- 
conservation,  or,  as  we  have  put  it,  for  stability  of  life  in  the 
face  of  the  manifold  forces  which  threaten  and  limit  him. 
The  practical  aspect  is  denoted  by  the  acts  of  worship  and 
service  which  belong  to  the  nature  of  religion.  We  offer 
our  definition  for  what  it  is  worth,  but  we  may  add  that 
no  definition,  however  careful,  will  take  any  one  to  the 
heart  of  the  subject  and  reveal  to  him  its  full  meaning  and 
richness.  Such  a  knowledge  will  depend  on  personal 
religious  experience  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  a  sympathetic 
study  of  the  facts  on  the  other.  Some  definitions  of 
religion  suggest  that  those  who  framed  them  looked  on 
the  phenomena  from  an  external  standpoint,  and  were 
influenced  by  extraneous  considerations.  They  seem 
rather  to  have  asked  what  meaning  they  could  assign  to 
religion  in  terms  of  their  own  theory  of  life,  than  to  have 
asked  what  it  meant  for  those  who  were  religious.  In 
illustration  we  may  refer  to  the  sociologist  who  reduces 

1  Prof.  Ladd  (Philosophy  of  Religion,  i.  89)  appears  to  have  fallen  into 
this  error,  and  gives  a  long  and  involved  definition  ol  religion. 


DEFINITION   OF    RELIGION  185 

religion  to  a  protective  function  of    the  social    organism 
developed  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

Let  us  now  attempt  to  set  forth,  in  connexion  with  the 
definition  we  have  suggested,  what  is  characteristic  in  the 
religious  experience.     A  notable  and  persistent  feature  of 
the  spiritual  consciousness  is  its  reference  to  the  transcen- 
dent, its  direction  leyond  what  is  immediately  given.     Even   j 
primitive  spiritism  is  a  movement  beyond  the  bare  facts  of 
the  environment  and  a  belief  in  more  than  appears  on  the    ; 
surface.     Man's  failure  to  help  himself  induced  disappoint- 
ment with  his  lot  and  a  desire  for  more  powerful  helpers. 
So  man,  by  an  impulse  born  of  his  needs,  seeks  to  win  to 
his    side    the    mysterious     powers     which    are    behind 
phenomena.     The  evolution  of  religion,  regarded  from  one 
point  of    view,  is  just  a  process  which  gradually  makes 
clearer  what  is  involved  in  this  reference  to  the  Beyond.  * 
In  tribal  religion  the    spirits   lurk    behind  the  things  of 
sense:  in  Universal  Keligion,  God  is  a  transcendent  and  j 
spiritual  Keality.     If  man  at  any  stage  of  his  history  had 
been  able  to  find  his  complete  good  within  his  immediate 
environment,  he  would  have  ceased  to  be  religious.     But 
this  reference  to  something  beyond,  so  essential  in  religion, 
calls  for  an  exercise  of  faith  on  man's  part.     The  lowest 
form  of  religion  begins  in  an  act  of  trust, — trust  that  under 
certain    conditions    the    unseen    spirits    will    help    their 
worshipper, — and  in  the  highest  form  of  religion  faith  plays 
a  great  part.     The  religious  mind  never  reaches  its  object 
by  a  cogent  inference    from    what  is  given,  nor    does  it 
measure  its  assurance  by  a  careful  computation  of  what  the 
premises  will   justify.     Beyond    question,  religion,  in    its\ 
advanced  stages  especially,  welcomes  the  aid  of  reason,  and  \ 
an    enlightened    piety    cannot    be    anti-rational.     But    it    ) 
establishes  relations  with  the  suprasensible  object  first  and 
foremost  by  an  act  of  faith,  of  which  the  real  motive  is 
the  needs  and  desires  of  the  soul.     Eeligious  faith,  then, 
springs  from  the  pressure  of  human  needs,  and  these  needs 
in  their  turn  depend  on  the  human  nature  which  reveals 
itself  in  them.     Man's  desire  for  goods  is  reflected  in  the 


186      RELIGION:   ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

character  of  his  gods,  and  desire  unsatisfied  works  change 
even  on  the  image  of  things  in  heaven.  But  inseparably 
linked  with  this  conative  or  active  side  of  the  religious 
spirit  are  the  feelings  and  emotions  in  terms  of  which  it  is 
expressed.  Piety,  at  whatever  level  you  take  it,  is  only 
recognisable  as  such  when  it  is  marked  by  emotional 
reactions  and  suffused  by  a  feeling- tone.  The  feelings  are 
the  quickening  life-blood  of  religion;  without  them  it 
would  lose  its  distinctive  quality. 

It  may  be  well  to  add  that  the  way  in  which  the 
religious  mind  refers  to  a  reality  above  it  can  never  be 
vague  and  indeterminate  ;  it  cannot,  for  instance,  be  a  mere 
affirmation  that  there  is  a  region  of  mystery  beyond  the 
seen  and  the  tangible.  The  divine  object  will  always  be 
one  which  satisfies  a  personal  and  spiritual  need,  and  it 
will  primarily  represent  a  value.  Pure  fact  by  itself  has 
no  religious  interest ;  only  when  it  takes  the  form  of  a 
good  for  human  souls  can  it  evoke  religious  feeling. 
A  God  of  whom  all  we  knew  was  that  he  existed, 
or  an  Absolute  of  which  we  had  merely  an  "  indefinite 
consciousness,"  as  Herbert  Spencer  suggested,  would  be 
spiritually  worthless.  Hence  the  supramundane  object  of 
faith  is  conceived  to  be  a  supreme  and  ultimate  value,  a 
value  which  finally  satisfies  human  needs. 

The  transcendent  aspect  of  religion,  on  which  we  have 
laid  stress,  has  not  always  been  admitted.  The  Hegelian 
philosophy,  for  instance,  asserts  that  the  true  nature  of 
religion  does  not  imply  any  movement  beyond  the  world, 
apprehended  in  its  full  meaning.  For  God  is  a  purely 
immanent  principle,  and  the  outer  world  and  man  are 
stages  of  his  developing  life.  The  reality  of  the  "  other 
world  "  lies  within  this  world :  it  is  this  world  known  in 
its  spiritual  truth.  In  other  words,  we  are  offered  a 
strictly  immanental  interpretation  of  religion ;  and  there 
are  those  who  sympathise  with  this  line  of  interpretation 
without  professing  to  accept  the  type  of  idealism  which 
inspired  it.  Any  adequate  attempt  to  refute  this  theory 
would  carry  us  beyond  the  region  of  psychological  dis- 


DEFINITION    OF    RELIGION  187 

cussion,  and  would  be  out  of  place  at  this  stage  of  our 
argument.  If,  however,  this  theory  is  put  forward  in 
criticism  of  what  is  here  advanced  in  regard  to  the  essential 
nature  of  religion,  our  answer  would  be  that  our  view 
really  rests  on  an  interpretation  of  the  psychological  facts. 
We  do  not  import  the  conception  into  religion,  but  Jind  it 
there.  The  direction  of  the  religious  spirit  to  the  supra- 
mundane  is  unmistakable  in  the  Universal  Eeligions,  and 
they  only  carry  to  its  issue  a  tendency  present  in  religion 
from  the  beginning.  Buddhism,  if  not  a  theistic  is  at 
least  a  redemptive  religion,  and  it  points  the  souls  of  its 
disciples  beyond  the  shifting  and  illusory  world  of  sense  to 
a  transcendent  ethical  order.  Buddhism  no  less  than 
Christianity  proclaims  the  precept:  "This  is  not  your 
rest."  Christianity  from  the  first  insisted  on  the  in- 
sufficiency of  the  world,  and  preached  the  transitory 
character  of  all  earthly  interests.  Whatever  criticism 
may  be  offered  on  the  validity  of  this  transcendent  reference, 
it  ought  at  least  to  be  accepted  as  a  feature  of  the  working 
of  religion  in  the  past  and  in  the  present.  From  an  initial 
dissatisfaction  with  its  environment  the  religious  spirit  has 
advanced  step  by  step  to  the  final  proclamation  of  the 
inadequacy  of  all  earthly  values.  Long  entangled  and 
led  captive  by  the  lust  for  temporal  goods,  the  soul  has 
found  its  self-expression  in  faith  in  a  Good  which  is 
supramundane  and  eternal.  The  forms  of  its  worship  and 
the  flow  of  its  emotional  life  are  all  touched  with  the 
sense  that  its  goal  and  destiny  lie  beyond  this  bourne  of 
time  and  place.  But  the  essential  nature  of  religion  will 
become  clearer  from  the  distinctions  we  now  proceed  to 
draw. 


B. — RELATIONS  TO  SCIENCE,  MORALITY,  AND  ART. 

The  problem  of  the  relations  in  which  Eeligion  stands 
to  Science,  Morality,  and  Art  is  one  which  could  not  arise 
save  at  a  comparatively  advanced  stage  of  culture.  Only 
with  the  progress  of  civilisation  did  these  spheres  of 


188      RELIGION:   ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

activity  become  plainly  differentiated,  and  each  won  an 
independence  for  itself.  But  with  the  marking  out  of 
provinces  and  the  assertion  of  rights,  there  came  the  need 
of  mutual  understanding  and  the  adjustment  of  claims; 
and  the  duty  of  distinguishing  had  for  its  counterpart  the 
obligation  of  establishing  positive  relations.  Science  and 
Morality,  Art  and  Religion,  had  all  proved  themselves 
normal  aspects  of  human  culture ;  and  some  connexion 
subsisted  between  them,  for  each  in  its  way  was  a  reaction 
of  the  human  spirit  on  the  facts  of  experience.  These 
several  phases  of  culture  had  all  developed  in  response  to 
the  endeavour  of  developing  minds  to  find  satisfaction  for 
native  desires  and  wants.  In  face  of  their  common  origin, 
then,  one  would  say  that  there  must  be  bonds  of  affinity 
between  them.  But  we  do  not  seem  to  be  justified  in 
asserting  that  one  of  these  phases  is  logically  prior  to  the 
others,  and  has  been  the  source  of  the  rest.  The  clainYl 
has  been  made  for  Religion,  that  it  was  the  origin  of 
Science,  Morality,  and  Art.  Beginning  in  religious 
motives,  and  at  first  consecrated  to  religious  uses,  they 
by  and  by  came  to  exist  for  themselves  and  even  to 
disown  the  life  from  which  they  sprung.  This  sweeping 
claim  cannot  be  substantiated.  The  rudimentary  impulses 
to  scientific  explanation  or  to  artistic  expression  do  not 
necessarily  depend  upon  the  prior  existence  of  religion : 
they  issue  like  religion  itself  fresh  from  the  needs  of 
human  nature.  Religion  in  its  specific  character  certainly 
cannot  be  shown  to  condition  the  rise  of  the  other  aspects 
of  culture.  As  we  trace  the  structure  of  society  backward 
in  time,  the  lines  of  demarcation  between  its  provinces 
grow  fainter  and  we  approach  the  condition  of  an  un- 
differentiated  whole.  The  religious  and  the  magical  are 
interfused,  and  they  are  not  clearly  distinguishable  from 
the  other  sides  of  social  life.  And  while  it  is  true  that 
religion  was  the  earliest  to  assume  a  distinctive  form,  it  is 
too  much  to  say  that  the  other  phases  of  culture  were  created 
by  it.  The  roots  were  already  there  in  the  soil  of  the  social 
life,  ready  to  spring  to  light  under  favouring  conditions. 


RELIGION   AND   SCIENCE  189 

(a)  Let  us  consider,  first,  the  relation  in  which  Beligion 
stands  to  Science.  The  formative  impulses  of  science  are 
to  be  found  in  the  purposive  activity  of  man.  Science,  it 
has  been  said,  grew  out  of  the  manual  arts.  Man,  endowed 
with  superior  brain  power  to  the  animals,  and  free  to  use 
his  hands  in  virtue  of  his  upright  posture,  set  himself  early 
to  adjust  means  to  ends  in  order  the  better  to  maintain 
himself  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  He  learned  to  chip 
the  rough  flint  into  a  rude  weapon  for  his  hand,  and 
planned  means  whereby  he  might  capture  the  wild  creatures 
on  which  he  fed.  By  the  habit  of  manipulating  means 
towards  ends  the  reflecting  spirit  was  fostered,  and  out  of 
the  will  to  live  the  desire  to  understand  was  born.  As 
man's  desires  increased  so  was  his  study  of  the  means  of 
satisfying  them  enlarged,  and  his  outlook  on  the  ways  in 
which  things  act  took  a  wider  scope.  It  is  easy  to  see 
how  important  man  found  it  to  understand  the  causal 
connexion  of  things,  so  that  he  might  anticipate  their 
action  and,  if  need  be,  divert  it  to  his  own  purposes.  It 
was  on  this  practical  basis  that  the  scientific  spirit  evolved, 
the  spirit  which  strives  to  comprehend  the  relations  of 
objects  and  to  formulate  the  laws  of  their  working.  At 
first  employed  in  the  interests  of  immediate  wants,  science 
developed  into  an  activity  of  mind  which  set  a  theoretical 
value  on  the  explanations  of  natural  phenomena. 

The  aim  of  science  is  to  establish  continuity  between  the 
elements  given  in  outer  experience,  and  it  achieves  this  by 
means  of  the  principle  of  cause  and  effect.  It  goes  on  the 
presupposition  that  phenomena  are  really  connected  with 
one  another,  and  that  there  can  be  nothing  purely  accidental 
or  arbitrary  in  the  order  of  nature.  Inability  to  state  a 
connexion  is  a  challenge  to  thought  and  never  an  indica- 
tion of  incoherency.  The  so-called  scientific  methods  are 
methods  in  which  the  scientist  interrogates  nature,  in  order 
to  elicit  the  ways  in  which  facts  are  causally  related  one  to 
another.  Those  forms  of  causal  action  which  constantly 
seem  to  recur — for  instance,  the  production  of  heat  by 
friction,  or  the  attraction  exercised  by  one  body  on  another 


190        RELIGION:    ITS   NATURE   AND   RELATIONS 

— are  termed  "  laws  of  nature,"  and  they  are  comprehensive 
and  convenient  summaries  of  the  behaviour  of  things.  In 
other  words,  a  "  law  "  is  a  serviceable  formula  by  which  the 
man  of  science  generalises  the  operations  of  nature.  The 
aim  of  the  scientific  thinker  is  to  reach  wider  and  wider 
laws,  or  conceptual  formulae,  which  shall  describe  the 
working  of  nature  as  a  mechanically  connected  system  of 
parts.  Science,  it  has  been  said,  is  a  language  by  which 
the  mind  makes  intelligible  to  itself  the  largest  number 
of  objects.1 

In  themselves,  then,  the  natural  sciences  are  neither 
religious  nor  anti-religious.  They  deal  with  the  facts  of 
outer  experience  at  a  level  and  under  conditions  which  do 
not  raise  religious  issues.  For  it  is  the  factual  aspect  of 
things  which  is  under  review :  the  question  is  how  facts 
as  such  are  connected  and  the  order  in  which  change 
proceeds.  When  the  scientist  is  able  to  set  forth  the 
quantitative  relations  involved  in  a  phenomenon,  and  to 
determine  its  place  in  the  series  of  causes  and  effects,  his 
proper  task  is  accomplished.  There  is  plainly  a  great 
deal  in  experience  which  science  ignores,  and  it  does  so 
because  there  is  a  great  deal  which  is  not  relevant  to  its 
purpose.  The  limitations  of  its  utilitarian  origin  cling  to 
it ;  and  the  ultimate  reality,  and  the  whence  and  whither 
of  things,  do  not  come  within  its  purview.  With  the 
qualitative  character  of  objects  and  the  existence  of  a 
realm  of  ends  it  is  not  concerned.  The  world  of  personal 
values  and  ideals  in  which  the  religious  spirit  lives  and 
breathes  is  a  foreign  land  to  the  natural  sciences:  they 
are  at  home  in  the  domain  of  outer  not  of  inner  experience, 
and  on  the  validity  of  the  spiritual  values  science  as  such 
can  give  no  pronouncement.  If  science  then  keeps  within 
its  own  province,  we  may  fairly  conclude  there  need  be  no 
dispute  or  misunderstanding  on  its  part  with  religion. 
Nevertheless,  devotion  to  the  objects  and  methods  of  science 
sometimes  develops  into  a  narrow  specialism  which  mis- 
conceives and  exaggerates  the  range  and  significance  of  its 
1  Boutroux,  Science  et  Religion,  1908,  p.  241. 


RELIGION   AND   SCIENCE  191 

own  activity.  The  scientist  no  less  than  the  theologian 
may  fall  under  the  dominion  of  the  "idols  of  the  den." 
Occasionally  the  scientific  inquirer  has  claimed  to  extend 
his  peculiar  methods  and  principles  to  the  whole  universe, 
and  has  affirmed  his  right — like  Haeckel,  for  instance — to 
interpret  the  kingdom  of  ends  and  values  on  purely 
naturalistic  lines.  Eeligion  is  bound  to  resist  such  an 
attempt ;  for  a  strictly  mechanical  and  naturalistic  con- 
ception of  experience  reduces  that  spiritual  view  of  the 
world  on  which  it  stakes  its  existence  to  an  illusion.  If 
the  criteria  of  the  natural  sciences  are  made  the  norms  of 
all  reality,  then  the  validity  of  religion  must  be  denied, 
for  its  postulates  transcend  the  natural  order.  So  the 
very  notion  of  moral  and  spiritual  obligation,  tried  by  this 
test,  becomes  illegitimate,  and  man  is  justified  in  following 
only  what  his  natural  interests  and  desires  prescribe.  For 
the  universe  in  its  essence  would  be  a  natural  process,  and 
would  contain  nothing  which  could  not  be  reduced  to 
mechanical  laws. 

If  the  natural  sciences  insisted  on  making  such  claims, 
their  relation  to  religion  could  only  be  one  of  fundamental  * 
antagonism :  affirmation  on  the  one  side  would  be  met  by 
blank  denial  on  the  other.  Happily,  however,  the  large 
majority  of  scientific  men  are  conscious  of  the  illegitimacy 
of  such  demands.  There  are  at  least  two  cogent  reasons 
for  restricting  the  scope  of  physical  science,  and  for 
refusing  to  accept  its  pronouncements,  when  offered,  on 
ultimate  problems.  First,  there  is  the  notorious  inability 
of  science  to  explain  the  origin  and  development  of  con- 
sciousness from  its  mechanical  and  realistic  standpoint. 
Between  the  mechanical  interactions  of  material  elements 
and  the  processes  of  a  living  mind  there  is  a  gulf  which  is 
not  to  be  bridged.  So  transparent  is  the  difficulty  that 
few  in  the  present  day  are  prepared  to  argue  that  matter 
can  be  the  cause  of  thought :  most  scientists  are  content 
to  affirm  that  there  is  a  correspondence  or  parallelism 
between  brain  changes  and  psychical  processes — a  theory 
which,  if  taken  for  more  than  a  provisional  "working 


192      RELIGION:   ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

hypothesis,"  has  difficulties  of  its  own  to  contend  against. 
This  proved  incapacity  of  naturalism  to  explain  a  wide 
field  of  experience  is  conclusive  evidence  of  its  limitation. 
This  inference,  in  the  second  place,  is  borne  out  by  the 
twofold  abstraction  which  marks  the  method  of  the 
natural  sciences.  Speaking  broadly,  we  may  say  that 
they  accept  their  facts  as  given  without  inquiring  how 
they  come  to  be  given.  Eeflexion  however,  shows  that  the 
world  of  scientific  facts  depends  on  the  relating  and 
generalising  activity  of  the  mind.  The  so-called  "  facts  " 
of  science  are  all  expressed  in  terms  of  conceptual  thinking, 
and  would  not  be  possible  for  a  purely  perceptual  ex- 
perience. In  other  words,  they  presuppose  a  process  of 
ideal  construction ;  and  if,  for  certain  purposes,  we  may 
leave  this  truth  out  of  consideration,  we  certainly  cannot 
do  so  when  we  try  to  explain  their  real  nature.  Further, 
if  the  natural  sciences  make  abstraction  from  the  experient 
subject,  they  also  make  abstraction  from  the  nature  of 
their  objects.  They  never  regard  things  in  their  total 
character,  but  confine  themselves  to  certain  narrow  and 
well-defined  aspects  in  dealing  with  them.  For  instance, 
they  do  not  treat  the  qualitative  character  of  objects  ex- 
cept and  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  formulated  in  the  way  of 
quantitative  relations.  Colour  is  only  treated  in  that 
aspect  in  which  its  differences  can  be  expressed  in  terms 
of  the  oscillations  of  light  waves  of  varying  lengths.  Yet 
the  notion  of  colour  is  certainly  not  exhausted  by  its 
translation  into  terms  of  quantity.  Again,  each  fact  is  a 
centre  standing  in  a  multiplicity  of  relations  to  other  facts 
in  the  background.  With  all  of  these  relations  science 
cannot  deal,  but  it  selects  certain  aspects  in  which  it  is 
interested,  and  seeks  to  make  explicit  the  connexions  that 
are  involved  in  them.  But  what  is  irrelevant  for  the 
purpose  on  hand  is  not  irrelevant  when  we  regard  the 
whole  character  of  the  object ;  and  science,  in  limiting  its 
point  of  view  in  order  to  work  effectively,  sacrifices  any 
claim  to  completeness  of  understanding.  In  consequence 
of  this  severely  selective  method  of  procedure  the  formulae 


RELIGION   AND   SCIENCE  193 

with  which  the  man  of  science  operates  are  never  given  with 
absolute  exactness  in  the  realm  of  concrete  facts.  They 
represent  what  will  take  place  under  certain  assumptions ; 
they  are  rather  working  hypotheses  whose  justification 
lies  in  the  fact  that  they  do  work,  or  express  sufficiently 
well  for  the  purpose  some  phase  of  the  behaviour  of 
things.1  Instead  of  being  the  ground  of  reality,  scientific 
laws  are  no  more  than  the  pale  reflexion  of  the  concrete 
world  from  which  they  have  been  abstracted. 

The  foregoing  train  of  thought,  which  is  in  substance 
that  of  some  eminent  men  of  science,  goes  to  show  that 
science  cannot  rightly  pass  judgment  on  the  nature  and 
value  of  religion.2  On  the  other  hand,  religion,  because  its 
point  of  view  is  more  comprehensive,  has  a  bearing  on  the 
scientific  interpretation  of  the  world.  For  religion,  like 
philosophy,  gives  us  a  Weltanschauung ;  and  the  scientific 
interpretation  of  things,  in  so  far  as  it  is  valid,  must  find 
a  place  within  the  religious  world-view.  The  two  stand- 
points are  not  opposed,  they  are  related  to  one  another  as 
the  partial  to  the  more  complete,  as  the  causal  to  the 
teleological.  The  sciences  operate  throughout  with  the 
category  of  causality ;  and  when  they  have  established 
the  existence  of  causal  connexion  their  task  is  done. 
But  a  determinate  connexion  which  runs  in  the  form  of  a 
series  of  causes  and  effects  inevitably  raises  the  question, 
how  the  series  comes  to  constitute  a  rational  whole  or 
coherent  system  of  elements.  And  the  answer  seems  to 
require  us  to  transcend  the  category  of  mechanical  con- 
nexion in  experience,  and  to  postulate  the  teleological 
organisation  of  experience.  That  is  to  say,  the  continuity 
between  the  elements  within  our  experienced  world  must 
rest  upon  the  wider  principle  of  a  final  cause  or  end 
which  is  realised  in  and  through  them.  The  narrower 
idea,  when  examined,  expands  into  the  wider  and  justifies 

1  For  example,  the  formula  for  falling  bodies  S  =  £gt2  cannot  be  perfectly 
accurate  in  its  results  so  long  as  bodies  fall  through  a  resisting  medium, 
and  are  subject  to  the  attraction  of  other  bodies  besides  the  earth. 

a  For  example,  Mach,  Ostwald,  Poincare,  and  Pearson. 

13 


194      RELIGION:   ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

itself  by  so  doing.  Now,  while  the  theoretical  discussion 
of  the  notion  of  end  belongs  to  philosophy,  the  practical 
use  of  the  idea  is  central  and  essential  for  religion.  The 
i/  religious  mind  constantly  regards  the  world  and  life  in  the 
light  of  a  final  purpose,  and  relates  all  parts  of  experience 
to  a  supreme  end  and  value.  The  causal  connexions  ex- 
pressed through  the  uniformities  of  nature  have  worth  for 
it  just  in  so  far  as  they  are  a  means  to  a  divine  end :  the 
world  interests  the  religious  man,  not  because  it  reveals  the 
reign  of  law,  but  because  it  spells  the  supremacy  of  pur- 
pose. On  this  view,  then,  science  and  religion  stand  in  the 
relation  of  two  levels  of  experience,  the  latter  or  higher 
being  the  realm  in  which  we  answer  in  a  practical  way 
the  problems  raised  in  the  former.  Whether  the  postu- 
lates of  religion  are  a  satisfactory  answer  to  the  problems 
on  hand  is  a  matter  which  lies  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of 
science  to  decide :  to  assert  the  competence  of  science  in 
this  regard  would  be  as  foolish  as  to  make  grammatical 
principles  the  sufficient  test  of  the  value  of  a  poem. 

A  word  may  be  added  on  the  objection  that  religion 
and  science  are  fundamentally  opposed  in  spirit.  Science, 
it  is  said,  is  rational,  while  religion  is  purely  a  matter  of 
faith :  the  one  draws  sober  inferences  from  facts,  the 
other  makes  a  venture  on  trust.  Though  this  description 
is  not  entirely  wrong,  it  greatly  exaggerates  the  difference 
between  the  scientific  and  the  religious  temper.  Faith  and 
reason  are  not  to  be  sharply  separated  and  opposed  in  this 
fashion ;  religion  is  not  anti-rational,  and  science  itself 
involves  faith.  The  man  of  science  has  faith  in  the 
reliability  of  the  faculties  by  which  he  frames  his  hypo- 
theses and  draws  his  conclusions.  He  has  faith,  however 
baffled  he  may  be  for  the  time  being,  that  if  he  oan  but 
set  out  from  adequate  premises  and  draw  logical  inferences, 
these  will  be  verified  by  the  facts  of  nature.  And  he  has 
also  faith  that  the  uniformities  he  has  established  will 
hold  good  in  the  future  as  they  have  done  in  the  past, 
and  that  the  continuity  he  has  found  in  experience  will 
everywhere  and  always  obtain.  In  all  this  the  man  of 


RELIGION   AND    MORALITY  195 

science  goes  beyond  what  he  can  strictly  prove :  he  makes 
postulates  which  imply  faith  on  his  part.  We  conclude, 
therefore,  that  neither  in  its  method  nor  its  temper  is 
science  necessarily  hostile  to  religion ;  and  if  science  is  not 
anti-religious  neither  is  religion  anti-scientific.  Temporary 
disputes  and  misunderstandings  there  have  been ;  and  they 
may  still  be,  if  the  one  trespasses  on  the  ground  of  the 
other.  But  an  abiding  conflict  is  impossible,  unless,  indeed, 
the  human  mind  is  in  some  inexplicable  fashion  at  discord 
with  itself. 

(&)  On  any  view  Morality  lies  closer  to  Eeligion  than 
Science,  for  its  object-matter  is  not  mechanically  connected 
facts,  but  the  values  and  goods  of  the  spiritual  life.  Moral 
values  are  likewise  religious  values :  and  if  morality 
appears  to  be  a  part  of  religion,  religions  in  their  turn  fall 
to  be  judged  by  an  ethical  test.  The  moral  and  the 
religious  life  are  both  inspired  by  the  desire  for  goods, 
though  the  goods  have  not  quite  the  same  significance  in 
the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  At  the  same  time  the  full 
meaning  of  the  relationship  is  only  seen  by  the  eye  which 
follows  the  process  of  its  development  in  human  culture  ; 
and  failure  to  adopt  this  method  has  led  to  misconception 
and  dispute.  Distinguished  anthropologists,  like  Waitz 
and  Tylor,  have  declared  that  primitive  religion  has 
nothing  to  do  with  morality,  an  assertion  which  is  only 
plausible  if  you  mean  by  morality  developed  ideas  of  right 
and  wrong.  Beyond  question  low  forms  of  religion  are 
frequently  associated  with  customs  which  to  our  minds  are 
repulsive  and  immoral.  But  to  apply  a  test  of  this  kind 
is  as  unfair  as  it  would  be  to  say,  that  savage  man  has  no 
religion  because  his  religion  would  be  utterly  unacceptable 
to  us.  The  real  point  is,  whether  the  earliest  forms  of 
religion  are  associated  with  the  elements  out  of  which  the 
ethical  life  subsequently  develops.  The  answer  must 
certainly  be  in  the  affirmative.  For  the  beginnings  of 
ethics  are  just  the  customs  of  the  tribe,  which  stand  for 
a  social  good  and  act  as  a  rule  binding  on  the  will  of 
the  members.  Over  these  customs  tribal  religion  casts 


196        RELIGION:    ITS   NATURE   AND   RELATIONS 

its  protecting  shadow,  and  invests  them  with  a  religious 
sanction  and  value.  To  disobey  the  cutsom  would  be  to 
offend  the  spirits,  and  would  draw  down  on  the  offender 
mysterious  and  even  magical  evils ;  so  intimately  are  the 
mores,  the  morals  or  customs  of  the  tribe,  interwoven  with 
its  religion.  Accordingly,  when  we  are  told  that  among 
the  Ewe,  Yoruba,  and  Tschi  tribes  of  the  West  African 
Gold  Coast  religion  is  ceremonial  merely  and  has  nothing 
to  do  with  morality,  or  that  the  Central  Australian 
aborigines  know  of  no  supreme  Being  who  takes  cognisance 
of  moral  acts,  we  are  content  to  reply  that  religion  and 
morality  are  not  being  compared  at  the  same  level.1  This 
evidence,  and  much  more  of  the  same  sort,  does  not  really 
tell  against  the  position  we  occupy.  Westermarck  cites 
instances  to  prove  that,  at  the  present  day,  great  religiosity 
is  sometimes  linked  with  a  low  morality.2  The  issue  here 
turns  on  what  you  mean  by  religion.  To  say  that  immoral 
conduct  may  be  a  feature  of  a  spiritual  religion  is  a 
contradictio  in  adjecto:  what  is  true  is,  that  a  body  of 
superstitious  beliefs  and  practices  may  quite  well  go 
hand  in  hand  with  habitual  wrong-doing. 

The  primitive  loyalty  to  the  custom  protected  by  the 
god  was  a  discipline  towards  the  development  of  the  form 
of  moral  consciousness  which  prevails  in  the  National 
Religions.  The  custom  of  the  fathers  is  gradually  trans- 
formed into  a  norm  or  principle  of  wider  scope,  whose 
validity  has  deeper  roots  than  bygone  usage.  Civilised 
society  is  the  true  field  for  the  growth  of  moral  ideas  and 
the  evolution  of  duties.  What  strikes  us  at  this  period,  is 
the  intimate  way  in  which  the  moral  and  the  religious  are 
related  to  one  another.  Moral  and  religious  ideas  seem  to 
interpenetrate  and  to  function  as  common  factors  in  the 
national  well-being.  The  values  of  the  national  life  are 
also  religious  values,  and  patriotism  is  a  form  of  piety. 

1  Ellis  as  quoted  by  Westermarck,  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral 
Ideas,  vol.  ii.  p.  664  ;  Spencer  and  Gillen,  The  Northern  Tribes  of  Central 
Ausfralia,  pp.  491-492. 

'  Op.  cU.  pp.  735,  736. 


RELIGION   AND    MORALITY  197 

In  serving  the  State,  the  citizen  at  the  same  time  serves 
the  gods  who  preside  over  the  national  fortunes.  When  a 
people  believes  itself  to  be  under  a  theocratic  law,  the 
moral  life  is  wholly  absorbed  into  religion,  and  ethical 
obligations  become  religious  duties.  The  Hebrew  theocracy 
is  an  illustration.  In  the  ancient  religion  of  China  the 
ethical  way  of  life  on  earth  is  just  the  reflexion  and  ex- 
pression of  the  abiding  order  of  Heaven.  In  the  National 
Religions  we  never  witness  the  religious  and  the  ethical  set 
over  against  one  another,  but  always  a  fruitful  interaction 
between  the  two.  The  gods  above  become  better  gods 
through  the  blossoming  of  moral  virtues  below, — think,  for 
instance,  on  Zeus  and  Apollo — and  the  god  who  is  the 
embodiment  of  certain  virtues  invests  them  with  a  religious 
sanction  which  reacts  favourably  on  their  development 
among  men.  What  we  find,  then,  in  the  National  Re- 
ligions is  the  harmonious  fusion  of  the  religious  and  the 
ethical,  both  working  as  one  for  the  fulfilment  of  national 
ideals  and  aspirations.  Yet  it  would  be  too  much  to  say 
that  the  blending  of  the  religious  and  the  ethical  in  the 
religion  of  a  nation  necessarily  has  the  effect  of  inspiring 
the  individual  with  a  devotion  to  the  moral  virtues.  An 
external  and  utilitarian  religion,  like  that  of  ancient  Rome, 
might  help  to  secure  the  performance  of  civic  duties  without 
influencing  the  inner  moral  life  of  the  individual. 

The  tendency  of  modern  civilisation  has  been  to  make 
the  relation  of  religion  to  ethics  less  intimate.  The  close 
union  of  the  two  in  National  Religion  was  made  possible 
by  the  fact  that  religion  had  not  yet  freed  itself  from  the 
limitations  of  the  national  life,  and  asserted  its  universal 
claim  and  supramundane  character.  But  when  religion 
ceased  to  be  the  peculiar  possession  of  the  nation,  it  could 
no  longer  be  the  guardian  of  a  peculiar  type  of  civic 
virtue ;  and  when  its  transcendent  aspect  and  ideals  were 
clearly  expressed,  it  was  necessary  to  distinguish  it  from 
ethics  whose  field  was  the  social  life.  Moreover,  the 
growth  in  modern  times  of  critical  methods  and  sceptical 
doubts,  by  weakening  faith  in  the  authoritative  claims  and 


198      RELIGION:  ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

historic  reliability  of  religions,  has  given  strength  to  the 
demand  of  morality  to  be  separate  and  independent.  The 
ideas  and  postulates  of  religion,  it  is  said,  are  subject  to 
doubts  and  uncertainties  which  never  attach  to  moral 
conceptions :  morality  is  understood  of  all ;  it  is  sufficient 
for  itself ;  and  it  should  stand  on  its  own  firm  ground. 
"  Eeligion  per  se  has  nothing  to  do  with  morality,"  says 
Nietzsche ;  and  the  sentiment  finds  favour  with  many  who 
are  alienated  from  the  Church  and  yet  desire  to  do  their 
duty  by  society.  Under  the  inspiration  of  these  ideas, 
Ethical  Societies  have  sprung  up  in  recent  times  which 
give  moral  and  social  teaching  apart  from  any  religious 
creed.  To  those  who  object  that  morality  in  the  end  rests 
on  religious  postulates,  adherents  of  this  school  reply,  that 
ethics  rests  on  human  foundations  and  is  purely  a  social 
science.  So  they  present  us  with  a  utilitarian  conception 
of  morality  and  a  secular  ethics  stated  in  terms  of  scientific 
evolution.  The  insuperable  objection  to  this  theory — and 
it  is  felt  by  many  who  are  not  prejudiced  in  favour  of  any 
historical  form  of  religion — is,  that  no  explanation  of  moral 
obligation  through  ideas  of  pleasure-value  or  life-conserva- 
tion fits  in  with  the  actual  facts  of  the  moral  life.  The 
nature  of  moral  obligation  suffers  violence  when  it  is 
reduced  to  a  mere  means  of  promoting  individual  and 
social  interests.  The  idea  of  the  good  and  the  expedient 
refuse  to  coalesce.  If  the  conception  of  obligation  develops 
within  society,  still  its  full  range  and  significance  are  not 
explained  by  society.  Reflexion  shows  us  there  is  more 
in  the  word  '  ought '  than  is  contained  in  the  idea  of  a 
means  to  the  well-being  of  any  given  social  system  ;  for  the 
individual  to  whom  obligation  is  real  is  more  than  a  mere 
means  to  social  good,  and  there  is  a  sense  in  which  society 
itself  is  a  means  to  the  development  of  personal  life.  In 
the  long  run  what  the  good  man  ought  to  realise  is  an 
ideal  good,  and  his  obligation  to  do  so  flows  from  his 
spiritual  nature.  The  consistent  hedonist  can  only  construe 
obligation  to  mean  the  expediency  of  preferring  a  greater 
to  a  lesser  pleasure. 


RELIGION   AND    MORALITY  199 

The  real  relation  in  which  Ethics  stands  to  Eeligion 
will  be  clear  if  we  follow  out  the  implications  of  the  moral 
consciousness.  Theory  always  follows  practice,  and  the 
facts  of  the  moral  life  precede  any  reflective  theory  of  its 
nature  and  origin.  Custom,  and  afterwards  positive  law, 
had  already  broadly  distinguished  right  ways  of  acting 
from  wrong,  ere  the  problem  of  the  meaning  of  goodness 
was  deliberately  raised.  To  the  Greek  thinkers  belongs  the 
merit  of  first  developing  a  theory  of  ethics ;  and  Plato 
and  Aristotle  saw  with  unsurpassed  clearness  the  lines  on 
which  such  a  theory  should  be  framed.  The  fundamental 
principles  on  which  they  proceeded  are  still  valid.  The 
good  for  man,  they  held,  must  be  determined  by  the  end 
for  man,  and  this  again  must  be  understood  through  his 
specific  character.  Goodness  in  its  form  therefore  signifies 
the  full  and  harmonious  realisation  of  human  powers,  the 
development  of  man  in  his  essential  nature.  Moreover, 
Plato  and  Aristotle  were  perfectly  aware  that  no  right 
understanding  of  human  nature  was  to  be  gained  by  a  study 
of  the  isolated  individual ;  for  man  apart  from  society  was 
an  abstraction,  and  he  was  always  a  'social  animal/ 
Hence  the  ethical  end  must  be  both  personal  and  social, 
that  is  to  say,  a  good  personally  achieved  in  and  through 
social  relations.  The  Platonic  and  Aristotelian  conception 
of  ethics  was  teleological,  and  following  this  method,  the 
end  for  us  takes  the  form  of  an  ideal  which  denotes  the 
full  and  harmonious  actualisation  of  human  powers.  This 
ideal  has  a  formal  appearance  for  individuals  who  are 
involved  in  the  process  of  realising  the  good  in  time,  and 
they  can  only  dimly  forecast  the  experience  of  the  perfect 
good.  But  the  ideal  gradually  receives  content  from  the 
developing  spiritual  life  of  humanity.  The  legalistic 
theory  of  ethics — the  theory  that  moral  duties  are 
absolutely  determined  by  a  universal  law — ignores  the 
truth  that  the  moral  law  for  man  must  be  determined  by 
reference  to  his  psychological  and  spiritual  nature:  and 
that  nature  is  not  something  stereotyped  and  rigidly  fixed, 
but  develops  with  the  development  of  spiritual  life.  If 


200        RELIGION  I    ITS   NATURE   AND   RELATIONS 

you  neglect  psychology  and  historical  evolution,  and  base 
ethics  on  some  transcendent  and  universal  law,  the  result 
can  only  be  an  abstract  and  unworkable  principle  which 
breaks  down  whenever  a  serious  attempt  is  made  to  apply 
it  to  the  growing  and  variously  conditioned  moral  life  of 
man.  This  was  patent  in  the  case  of  Kant's  Categorical 
Imperative.  The  true  function  of  a  moral  law  or  rule  for 
the  will  is  not  to  determine  what  is  the  supreme  ethical 
end  or  ideal,  but  to  guide  human  wills  towards  it.  An 
ethical  norm  is  simply  a  generalised  rule  of  conduct  de- 
signed to  promote  social  and  individual  good :  it  is  not  a 
transcendental  principle  controlling  men  from  a  higher 
sphere.  When  many  wills  have  to  co-operate,  these 
general  rules  or  norms  are  necessary ;  but  they  are  not 
stereotyped  principles,  and  they  partake  of  the  flexibility 
of  the  developing  social  system,  where  the  good  is  a  growing 
content.  The  goods  and  values  of  the  personal  and  social 
life,  and  the  norms  which  guide  us  in  attaining  them,  fall 
therefore  into  an  ordered  system  of  means  and  ends,  all 
being  finally  related  to  the  achievement  of  the  ideal  end 
which  is  the  ultimate  standard.  The  ideal  cannot  of 
course  be  realised  in  any  single  act  or  series  of  acts  by  the 
individual :  the  most  he  can  do  is  to  make  his  lesser  ends 
consistent  with  and  steps  toward  the  supreme  End.  The 
moral  life  is  then  essentially  a  progress  to  a  goal,  to  a 
perfectly  realised  good.  Such  a  good  would  take  the  form 
of  a  perfect  social  order  in  which  society  and  the  individuals 
who  compose  it  were  means  to  one  another  in  actualising 
the  ideal. 

The  problem  still  remains  whether  the  moral  ideal 
can  be  conceived  to  be  complete  and  self-sufficing.  Or, 
if  not,  does  it  raise  issues  which  carry  us  for  their  solution 
into  the  sphere  of  religion  ?  If  the  moral  ideal  when 
stated  in  absolute  form  involves  difficulties  and  incon- 
sistencies, and  if  morality  must  find  its  deeper  meaning 
and  completion  in  religion ;  then  the  Kantian  theory  that 
religion  is  a  kind  of  appendage  to  the  moral  consciousness 
has  to  be  rejected  on  principle.  For  religion  would  mean 


RELIGION   AND   MORALITY  201 

more  than  the  fulfilment  of  moral  duties  as  divine  com- 
mands. It  is  of  course  true,  that  all  human  action  falls 
to  be  regarded  from  the  moral  point  of  view ;  and  religions, 
in  so  far  as  they  form  elements  in  human  culture,  will  be 
judged  by  the  moral  standard.  It  does  not  follow,  however, 
that  the  moral  consciousness,  though  a  legitimate,  is  a 
final  and  adequate  standard  of  religious  value.  That  the 
moral  ideal  is  not  final  will,  I  think,  be  plain,  if  we  find 
that  it  cannot  be  stated  in  a  complete  and  perfectly 
satisfying  form.  The  constant  feature  of  the  moral  life 
is  aspiration  and  endeavour :  what  is  stands  ever  in  contrast 
to  what  ought  to  be.  In  the  individual  man,  morality 
assumes  the  shape  of  progress  in  time;  but  the  progress 
never  ends  in  full  realisation,  nor  is  endeavour  crowned 
by  a  perfect  attainment.  In  the  moral  life  we  seek  for 
more  than  we  find  and  strive  for  more  than  we  gain. 

• '  What  act  proved  all  its  thought  had  been  I 
What  will  but  felt  the  fleshly  screen?" 

The  pursuit  of  an  ideal  never  fully  realised,  the  per- 
sisting contrast  of  higher  and  lower,  better  and  worse, 
seem  essential  to  morality  as  we  know  it.  The  moral 
ideal  conceived  to  be  a  perfectly  fulfilled  personal  and 
social  good,  a  good  which  by  its  completeness  excluded 
further  progress,  would  mean,  if  it  were  realised,  that  the 
moral  life  in  the  form  with  which  we  are  familiar  had 
ceased  to  exist.  A  state  of  static  perfection  under  mundane 
conditions  would  not  be  desirable  for  man  constituted 
as  he  is,  and  we  are  apparently  entangled  in  the  paradox, 
that  what  is  ideally  best  would  not  really  be  the  best. 
Nor  can  we  evade  this  dilemma  by  boldly  proclaiming 
that  the  moral  ideal  is  a  subjective  idea  projected  by  the 
human  mind  for  a  guide  to  progress,  but  to  which  nothing 
in  the  nature  of  things  corresponds.  For  if  the  Ultimate 
Good  is  not  real,  the  ethical  standard  becomes  unstable : 
if  we  cannot  do  more  than  say  that  actions  are  better  or 
worse  in  relation  to  one  another,  our  moral  valuations 
become  infected  with  a  fundamental  uncertainty.  A  purely 


202     RELIGION:  ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

relative  way  of  judging  the  good  could  give  no  security 
for  preferring  one  valuation  to  another;  only  if  the 
Supreme  Value  have  a  ground  in  reality,  do  we  gain  a 
solid  foundation  for  a  coherent  system  of  moral  judgments 
and  a  sufficient  test  of  their  consistency.  Without  sur- 
rendering its  claim  to  validity,  the  ethical  consciousness 
cannot  escape  from  the  dilemma  in  this  direction. 

But  further,  if  the  ethical  thinker  postulates,  as  we 
think  he  must  do,  the  validity  of  the  ideal,  he  thereby 
makes  demands  on  the  real  universe.  He  presupposes 
the  nature  of  reality  to  be  such  that  it  lends  itself  to 
the  realisation  of  ethical  values.  The  moral  life  is  a 
progress  towards  the  ideal,  but  the  progress  depends  in 
part  on  objective  conditions  which  are  beyond  the  control 
of  human  wills.  Man  is  a  natural  as  well  as  a  spiritual 
being,  and  the  progressive  realisation  of  the  ethical  end 
in  the  continuous  life  of  society  demands  a  conformity  of 
the  natural  to  the  ethical  order.  On  a  purely  naturalistic 
theory  of  mind  and  society  their  ultimate  destiny  must 
be  inseparably  linked  to  the  material  system  of  which 
they  are  a  part.  And  if  natural  forces  govern  spiritual 
issues,  the  result  foreshadowed  by  Huxley  is  inevitable: 
there  must  come  a  point  in  the  evolution  of  the  universe 
when  "  the  summit  will  be  reached  and  the  downward  route 
will  be  commenced,"  and  in  the  end  civilisation  with  all 
its  values  will  disappear  before  the  supremacy  of  cosmic 
forces.  Ethics  of  itself  can  give  us  no  assurance  that  the 
age-long  struggle  after  the  conservation  of  values  is  not 
doomed  to  a  final  defeat.  On  two  grounds,  therefore,  the 
ethical  consciousness  requires  to  be  supplemented  and 
completed :  it  can  neither  guarantee  the  persistence  of 
its  values,  nor  can  it  state  the  Ultimate  Good  in  a  finally 
satisfying  form. 

The  problems  raised  by  Ethics  find  their  solution  in 
Eeligion,  and  it  is  here  that  the  inner  connexion  of  the 
two  comes  to  light.  For  the  religious  consciousness  states 
explicitly  the  implications  of  the  moral  consciousness :  it 
affirms  the  reality  of  an  Ultimate  Good  in  the  form  of 


RELIGION   AND   MORALITY  203 

a  supreme  and  personal  Will,  who  is  the  Ground  and  End  of 
the  natural  and  the  spiritual  order  of  things.  The  God  who 
is  ethical  Ground  of  the  world  guarantees  the  validity  and 
persistence  of  the  ethical  values ;  and  it  is  in  and  through 
man's  relation  to  God,  the  perfect  Good,  that  the  ethical 
ideal  can  be  transcended  and  completed.  The  moral  end 
cannot  be  stated  in  an  absolute  form,  because  morality 
itself  is  not  absolute  and  final :  it  is  a  phase  of  spiritual 
life  which  points  beyond  itself  and  comes  to  its  goal  in 
religion.  And  the  goal  to  which  religion  points  is  supra- 
mundane,  a  transcendent  realm  in  which  man's  moral 
endeavour  passes  into  a  higher  fulfilment,  into  com- 
munion with  the  Source  and  End  of  all  goodness.  From 
this  point  of  view  the  moral  life  is  a  temporal  aspect  of 
the  religious  life,  and  finds  its  end  and  justification  in 
religion ;  while  religion  in  its  turn  gives  to  morality  a 
supersensuous  goal  and  a  deeper  meaning.  Religion  gives 
the  ground  and  the  guarantee  of  the  ethical  values  ;  and 
ethical  duties,  covering  as  they  do  the  wide  field  of  human 
relations,  lend  content  to  the  religious  will.  A  moral  duty 
is  likewise  a  religious  duty,  and  our  religious  service  has 
its  moral  aspect.  Hence  it  is  not  possible  to  draw  a  hard 
and  fast  line  of  distinction  between  the  two  spheres,  and  to 
say,  for  example,  this  question  is  purely  religious  and  that 
is  purely  ethical.  The  two  domains  pass  into  one  another ; 
and  the  difference  is  not  so  much  in  their  object-matter 
as  in  the  point  of  view  from  which  it  is  regarded  and  the 
meaning  which  is  read  into  it.  For  both  ethics  and  religion 
personal  lives  are  the  centres  of  value,  but  the  personal  life 
means  more  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other.  We  may 
regard  ethics  and  religion  as  respectively  a  lower  and  a 
higher  level  of  human  experience,  the  lower  leading  up 
to  the  higher ;  and  only  when  we  consciously  rise  to  the 
higher  can  we  discern  the  full  significance  of  the  lower. 
Whatever  distinctions  we  draw  between  morals  and  religion 
we  must  not  ignore  their  deeper  unity :  they  are  stages 
of  the  developing  spiritual  life  of  man  who  moves  upward 
to  his  divine  goal.  Any  attempt  to  divide  them,  and  to 


204        RELIGION:     ITS   NATURE   AND    RELATIONS 

oppose  the  one  to  the  other,  rests  on  a  fragmentary  and 
superficial  conception  of  human  nature. 

(c)  The  historical  relations  of  Eeligion  to  Art  in  some 
points  resemble  those  of  Eeligion  to  Morality.  In  both 
cases  the  relationship  to  religion  is  closest  at  the  stage 
of  National  Eeligion.  At  this  period  neither  aesthetic  nor 
ethical  values  are  sharply  distinguished  from  and  contrasted 
with  religious  values.  But  as  civilisation  grew  in  com- 
plexity it  had  for  its  consequence  an  increased  internal 
differentiation ;  and  in  modern  times  art  and  morality 
alike  have  asserted  their  independence  of  religion.  Yet 
in  the  case  of  art  too,  we  shall  discover  behind  the 
contrast  an  underlying  affinity  with  religion. 

We  can  scarcely  speak  of  a  relation  of  art  to  religion 
in  primitive  culture.  While  morality  in  its  undeveloped 
form  of  custom  was  necessary  to  the  order  and  mainten- 
ance of  early  society,  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  art. 
Moreover,  the  growth  of  artistic  faculties  requires  a  more 
assured  and  stable  basis  of  life  than  the  tribal  group 
possessed.  So  far  back,  indeed,  as  late  paleolithic  times 
man  carved  the  figures  of  the  animals  he  hunted  on 
fragments  of  their  tusks  and  horns,  or  painted  them  on 
the  walls  of  the  caves  in  which  he  dwelt.  But  these  early 
efforts  are  purely  imitative,  and  seem  to  possess  no 
religious  significance.1  Only  when  we  come  down  to  the 
beginnings  of  civilisation  do  we  meet  with  a  conscious  and 
sustained  endeavour  to  employ  art  in  the  service  of 
religion.  The  plastic  arts  were  the  first  to  be  used  by 
man  in  his  endeavour  to  honour  his  gods.  In  building 
temples  for  their  abode  and  decorating  them  for  their 
worship,  in  carving  statues  of  them  to  express  their 

1  One  cannot  examine  the  reproductions  of  the  engravings  and  paintingg 
found  in  the  caves  of  Altamira  in  Spain  and  La  Madeleine  in  France  (they 
are  given  by  Dr.  Sollas  in  his  work  on  Ancient  Hunters)  without  being 
impressed  by  the  genuine  artistic  interest  they  reveal.  Dr.  Sollas  mentions 
— op.  cit.  pp.  245-246 — that  M.  Salomon  Reinach  believes  the  figures  had 
a  magical  significance.  This  may  be  so,  but  it  does  not  explain  them.  A 
poor  daub  or  a  rude  image  would  suffice  for  magical  purposes  according  to 
savage  ideas. 


RELIGION    AND    ART  205 

character  and  office  and  to  bring  them  near  to  the  minds 
of  those  who  did  them  reverence,  he  was  striving  to  make 
art  subserve  the  purposes  of  religion.  In  the  works  of 
art  thus  dedicated  to  religious  uses  great  differences  in  the 
feeling  for  aesthetic  values  are  displayed  by  different 
nations.  The  statues  and  temples  reared  by  the  Baby- 
lonians and  the  Assyrians  impress  us  by  their  vastness  and 
monotony,  not  by  their  beauty.  In  ancient  Egypt,  art 
was  developed  on  similar  lines.  Here  we  find  symbolism 
worked  out  in  massive  forms,  significant  of  mystery 
and  suggestive  of  the  triumph  of  life  over  death,  rather 
than  a  feeling  for  the  beautiful  in  itself.  A  vital  de- 
velopment of  art  is  not  possible  apart  from  imagina- 
tive power  and  sympathy,  and  an  intuitive  feeling  for 
what  is  harmonious  and  expressive.  Where  religion  is 
cast  in  an  unimaginative  and  utilitarian  mould,  as  in 
ancient  Eome  and  China,  art  remains  on  the  whole  in  the 
background :  the  dominant  religious  values  do  not  lend 
themselves  to  fine  artistic  expression.  Greece  is  the 
conspicuous  illustration  of  the  interpenetration  of  aesthetic 
and  religious  feeling,  and  of  the  free  use  of  artistic  forms 
to  reveal  religious  values.  The  native  feeling  of  the 
Greeks  for  symmetry,  rhythm,  and  harmonious  synthesis 
was  embodied  in  the  structure  of  temples  and  in  the  forms 
of  gods  and  goddesses,  and  for  the  first  time  there  was 
disclosed  the  significance  of  beauty  in  religion.  Hegel, 
it  is  well  known,  termed  Greek  religion  the  "  Eeligion  of 
Beauty,"  and  in  this  connexion  he  made  the  penetrating 
remark:  "It  may  be  specially  noted  that  'beautiful  art 
can  only  belong  to  those  religions  in  which  the  spiritual 
principle,  though  concrete  and  intrinsically  free,  is  not  yet 
absolute."1  Or,  as  we  should  rather  put  it,  the  fusion  of 
religion  with  beauty  was  BO  fully  achieved  in  Greece, 
because  the  Greek  spirit  was  possessed  by  the  feeling  of 
the  immanence  of  the  divine  rather  than  its  transcendence. 
The  beautiful  form  was  the  direct  representation  of  the 
divine :  it  sought  to  satisfy  by  its  own  completeness 

1  Philosophy  of  Mind,  Wallace's  translation,  p.  172. 


206        RELIGION  :    ITS   NATURE   AND    RELATIONS 

rather  than  to  suggest  the  unrealised.  The  Zeus  of 
Phidias  expressed  in  a  wonderful  way,  we  may  well 
believe,  the  majesty  of  the  Ruler  of  gods  and  of  men. 
But  no  sensuous  form  can  reveal  the  depths  of  the  divine 
nature ;  and  when  the  religious  consciousness  of  humanity 
advanced  to  a  higher  stage,  the  visible  presentation  of 
Deity  was  felt  to  be  painfully  inadequate.  No  finite  form 
can  manifest  Him  "  whom  no  man  hath  seen  nor  indeed 
can  see."  Schiller  has  given  touching  utterance  to  the 
haunting  regret  for  that-  vanished  world  of  fair  forms, 
human  yet  divine : 

"Schone  Welt,  wo  bist  du  ?     Kehre  wieder 
Holdes  Bliithenalter  der  Natur  ! 
Ach,  nur  in  dem  Feenland  der  Lieder 
Lebt  noch  deine  fabelhafte  Spur." 

The  Gods  of  Greece  became  spectral  figures,  and 
gradually  disappeared  before  the  growing  light  of  a  new 
spiritual  day. 

Christianity  represents  a  new  attitude  to  the  world, 
and  the  Christian  faces  the  problem  of  life  in  a  temper 
and  spirit  which  make  the  Greek  blending  of  art  and 
religion  impossible.1  The  Greek  harmony  of  nature  and 
spirit  was  a  beautiful  episode  soon  left  behind  by  the 
onward  movement  of  human  experience.  Instead  of 
harmony,  Christianity  saw  sin  and  discord  in  a  world  which 
had  travelled  far  from  the  innocence  of  Eden :  from  the 
evil  in  and  around  him  man  must  be  redeemed  and  find 
his  goal  in  a  transcendent  realm.  The  true  treasure  of 
the  soul  was  in  heaven,  and  to  delight  in  fair  forms  was 
to  idolise  the  elements  of  a  world  which  was  destined  soon 
to  pass  away.  And  though  this  early  antagonism  to  art 
was  slowly  softened,  yet  all  through  the  Middle  Ages  the 
note  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  merely  phenomenal 
persists,  and  the  desire  of  the  heart  is  set  on  a  spiritual 
realm  beyond  the  seen  and  temporal.  Art,  as  it  developed 
in  mediaeval  times,  became  charged  with  a  new  significance, 

1  The  sense  of  the  incompatibility  of  the  Greek  and  the  Christian  spirit 
is  finely  suggested  in  Goethe's  poem,  "  Die  Braut  von  Corinth." 


RELIGION    AND   ART  207 

and  was  made  to  symbolise  the  rise  of  the  soul  to  the 
invisible  and  eternal.  Gothic  cathedral,  statues  and 
pictures  of  Virgin  and  Saviour,  saint  and  martyr,  the  great 
poem  of  Dante,  all  suggest  the  upward  movement  of  the 
soul  from  the  earth  and  the  fetters  of  sense  to  its  true 
home  in  heaven.  And  though  modern  Christendom  has 
qualified  this  'other  worldliness'  of  the  Middle  Age,  it 
still  maintains  the  transcendent  aspect  of  the  spiritual  life, 
and  enjoins  its  people  to  remember  that  'here  they  can 
have  no  continuing  city '  but  must  '  seek  one  to  come.' 
Hence  art  for  us  may  symbolise  and  suggest  spiritual 
truth  ;  but  it  cannot  explicitly  reveal  it.  To  put  it  other- 
wise :  art  may  be  the  handmaid  of  religion,  but  religion 
must  be  supreme  in  the  spiritual  house. 

The  association  of  art  with  religion  which  is  so  notable 
among  the  civilised  peoples  cannot  be  accidental.  This 
conjunction  points  to  an  inward  affinity  and  sympathy 
between  the  two,  whereby  the  one  aids  the  other  in  gain- 
ing a  greater  expressiveness  and  influence  on  the  spiritual 
life.  Art  makes  worship  more  suggestive  and  impressive, 
while  religion  imparts  a  purifying  and  uplifting  motive  to 
art.  The  fact  that  the  two  should  help  each  other  in  this 
fashion  implies  something  common  in  their  methods  and 
their  aims,  something  akin  in  their  attitude  to  the  world 
and  life.  Art  and  religion  both  work  through  the 
imagination,  vivifying  experience  by  lending  to  it  a 
significance  beyond  that  of  the  moment.  Neither  the  one 
nor  the  other  can  live  in  the  region  of  pure  thought :  the 
aesthetic  mind  has  its  sensuous  intuitions,  and  the  religious 
mind  envisages  the  things  of  the  spirit  in  imaginative 
representations  drawn  from  the  world  of  sense.  It  has 
been  remarked  that  there  could  not  be  any  deep  signifi- 
cance in  the  relation  of  art  to  religion,  if  the  end  of  art  was 
the  mere  imitation  or  copying  of  reality.  And  the 
remark  is  just.  The  accurate  photograph  is  useful,  but  it 
lacks  aesthetic  value ;  art  begins  when  man  goes  beyond 
what  is  outwardly  given  and  reveals  its  expressiveness  for 
the  sympathetic  mind.  The  lowly  origins  of  religion 


208        RELIGION  I    ITS   NATURE   AND    RELATIONS 

connect  themselves  with  an  instinctive  sympathy  for 
nature,  in  virtue  of  which  early  man  read  human  mean- 
ings into  its  moving  forces.  And  the  aesthetic  vision 
postulates  a  kind  of  sympathy  or  rapport  with  things  by 
means  of  which  they  yield  their  secret  to  the  discerning 
mind.  To  the  magic  of  this  mood  even  the  '  meanest 
flower  that  blows '  can  yield  a  message.  German  writers 
have  tried  to  express  this  attitude  of  soul  by  the 
word  Einfuhlung,  which  is  certainly  suggestive,  though  it 
leaves  out  of  sight  elements  other  than  feeling  in  the 
artistic  intuition.1  On  this  basis  of  sympathetic  insight 
the  artist,  by  uniting  form  and  content  in  a  living  way, 
strives  to  make  things  spiritually  expressive  to  us.  From 
the  formal  point  of  view  a  work  of  art  is  a  grouping 
of  elements  in  a  significant  whole.  For  example,  the 
musician  uses  a  multiplicity  of  single  tones,  so  relating 
them  one  to  another  in  a  coherent  structure  that  they 
convey  a  musical  impression  or  meaning.  The  painter 
works  out  his  design  by  means  of  a  variety  of  colours  and 
a  just  distribution  of  light  and  shade,  and  thus  gives  a 
consistent  presentation  of  the  beautiful.  On  its  formal 
side,  art  is  harmonious  synthesis ;  and  if  the  aesthetic 
scheme  includes  discords,  they  must  fall  within  and 
emphasise  the  expressive  whole.  But  art  is  more  than 
obedience  to  formal  conditions:  it  requires  the  living 
intuition  and  the  intimate  feeling  of  the  artist  to  animate 
his  materials  and  make  them  suggestive.  The  inner 
experience  and  vision  of  the  discerning  mind  must  be 
"wedded  to  this  goodly  universe,"  and  from  this  har- 
monious marriage  is  born  the  light  of  beauty  which 
transfigures  the  common  things  of  earth.  So  art  helps 
nature,  and  the  artistic  spirit  reveals  what  otherwise 

1  The  term  Einfuhlung  has  been  used  more  especially  by  Lipps,  who 
distinguishes  two  forms,  a  general  and  a  special.  Perhaps  it  is  not 
altogether  fanciful  to  find  a  parallel  in  religion,  where  an  instinctive 
sympathy  with  nature  engendered  animism,  while  a  further  act  of 
selective  sympathy  yielded  determinate  objects  of  worship.  H.  Maier 
(Psychologie  des  Emotionalen  Denkens,  pp.  479,  485)  prefers  the  term 


RELIGION    AND    ART  209 

would  remain  hidden  to  the  commonplace  and  casual  eye. 
Art  is  reality  transfigured  by  the  artist  and  offered  to 
the  many : — 

"  Art  was  given  for  that ; 
God  uses  us  to  help  each  other  so, 
Lending  our  minds  out." 

Of  the  artist,  the  musician,  and  the  poet  it  has  been  said : 
"  They  teach  us,  they  help  us,  backward  younger  brothers, 
to  see,  to  hear,  to  feel  what  our  rude  senses  had  failed 
to  detect.  They  enact  the  miracle  of  the  loaves  and 
fishes  again  and  again :  out  of  the  limited  things  of  every- 
day they  produce  a  bread  of  life  in  which  the  generations 
continue  to  find  nourishment."  l 

The  subjective  element — the  sympathetic  intuition  of 
the  aesthetic  mind — plays  an  important  part  in  artistic 
production  and  interpretation.  And  the  enjoyment  of  art 
depends  on  the  capacity  of  the  observer  or  listener  to 
enter  into  the  spiritual  mood  or  impression  it  is  meant 
to  reveal.  There  will  necessarily  be  variety  in  the  spiritual 
meanings  which  different  minds  find  in  the  creations  of 
poets,  painters,  and  musicians,  a  variety  corresponding 
to  the  degrees  of  sympathetic  discernment.  In  the  case 
of  music  especially,  the  flexibility  of  interpretation  is  very 
great,  for  music,  it  has  been  said,  is  the  pure  language 
of  feeling.  There  are  nuances  in  the  feeling-life  which 
defy  verbal  expression ;  and  if  the  appeal  of  music  has 
in  it  something  vague  and  elusive,  this  is  more  than 
atoned  for  by  the  wealth  of  emotion  and  the  range  of 
suggestion  which  it  provokes  in  the  spirit  that  is  finely 
touched  by  it : 

"The  rest  may  reason  and  welcome;  'tis  we  musicians  know." 

Through  its  infinite  capacity  for  suggestion,  art  comes 
into  close  contact  with  religion.  For  art,  like  religion, 
strives  to  reveal  the  higher  meaning  of  life,  and  seeks 
to  lift  the  soul  above  the  flat  and  commonplace  region 
where  it  is  so  prone  to  rest.  Art  so  represents  beauty 

1  Wallace,  Introductory  Essays  to  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Mind,  p.  xlii. 
14 


210       RELIGION  :    ITS   NATURE   AND    RELATIONS 

that  the  sympathetic  eye  discerns  in  it  the  image  of  a 
supersensible  reality.  Hence  it  calls  for  keener  vision 
and  quicker  sympathy,  that  things  seen  and  heard  may 
yield  a  revelation  of  the  unseen  and  eternal.  The 
suggestiveness  of  art  lies  in  its  symbolism ;  and  it  is  in 
virtue  of  this  symbolic  function  that  it  can  join  hands 
with  religion  in  aiding  the  upward  movement  of  the  soul 
in  worship.  Spiritualised  emotion  is  essential  to  worship 
in  its  higher  and  purer  forms ;  and  it  is  because  art 
can  be  the  means  of  evoking  and  directing  this  movement 
of  the  feelings,  and  promoting  the  rise  of  the  mind  to 
a  spiritual  reality,  that  it  has  become  so  closely  associated 
with  religion.  Not  by  accident  or  in  error  has  the 
Christian  Church  drawn  into  its  service  the  best  works 
in  the  plastic  arts,  in  painting,  and  in  music.  By  call- 
ing to  its  aid  the  rich  resources  of  art,  the  Church  felt 
that  worship  was  made  more  uplifting,  suggestive,  and 
impressive. 

When  the  intellectual  aspect  of  religion  is  greatly 
accentuated,  there  is  a  natural  tendency  to  depreciate 
the  service  which  art  can  render  to  religion.  Art  works 
through  sensuous  forms,  while  religion,  it  is  said,  is  in 
spirit  and  in  truth.  So  a  recent  writer  has  argued  that, 
as  religion  becomes  more  spiritual,  the  place  of  art  in  the 
cultus  falls  into  the  background.1  One  would  infer  then 
that  the  union  of  religion  with  art  is  a  stage  in  the 
evolution  of  the  religious  consciousness  which  is  being 
transcended.  This  view  seems  to  be  mistaken.  Were 
religion  essentially  a  satisfaction  of  the  thinking  self,  it 
would  be  feasible  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  art  had 
no  enduring  office  in  worship.  It  would  fall  into  the 
category  of  those  '  childish  things '  which  the  full  grown 
spiritual  man  puts  away.  But  we  need  hardly  repeat 
that  pure  thought  can  never  make  religion ;  and  since 
the  flow  of  feeling  and  the  upward  movement  of  the  soul 
are  deeply  involved  in  a  spiritual  worship,  art  will  always 
have  a  rightful  place  in  the  cultus.  There  have  been 

1  A.  Dorner,  Grundriss  der  ReligiompJiilosopJiie,  1903,  p.  399. 


RELIGION   AND   ART  211 

times  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church  when  beauty 
was  regarded  with  indifference,  or  even  treated  as  anta- 
gonistic to  true  piety.  The  motives  which  prompted 
this  hostility  are  intelligible.  Men  believed  they  were 
contending  for  purity  of  worship  against  idolatry ;  and 
when  they  supposed  they  possessed  all  truth  in  a  clear- 
cut  dogmatic  scheme,  the  office  of  symbolism  was  super- 
fluous. A  religion  thus  circumscribed,  austere,  and  definite, 
had  its  drawbacks  as  well  as  its  advantages.  Piety  was 
cast  too  much  in  an  intellectual  mould,  the  devotional 
spirit  was  impoverished,  and  religion  tended  to  lose  its 
intimate  relation  to  the  needs  and  interests  of  common  life. 
The  modern  mind  inclines  to  demand  a  richer  content 
for  the  spiritual  life,  and  to  accept  as  helpful  all  influences 
which  serve  to  realise  this  end.  Moreover,  the  tendency 
to  recognise  a  symbolic  element  in  theological  dogmas 
in  itself  brings  religion  into  closer  touch  with  art,  and 
prompts  those  who  sympathise  to  regard  both  as  fellow- 
labourers  in  the  prophetic  office.  After  all,  in  this  life 
we  *  see  through  a  glass  darkly/  and  shall  no  doubt 
continue  to  do  so :  and  the  voices  which  whisper  to  us 
of  what  is  beyond,  and  the  influences  which  purify  the 
heart  and  elevate  the  thoughts  and  feelings  above  the 
things  of  sense,  minister  to  the  Godward  movement  of 
the  soul.  It  would  be  futile  to  deny,  however,  that  the 
modern  assertion  of  the  independence  and  self-sufficiency 
of  art,  and  the  modern  cry  of  '  art  for  art's  sake/  contain 
elements  of  danger  to  religion.  For  art,  whatever  it 
may  do,  can  never  take  the  place  of  religion,  and  exercise 
a  redemptive  influence  on  average  men  and  women  on 
its  own  account ;  it  lacks  that  directly  ethical  and 
practical  side  which  is  so  characteristic  of  religion. 
Excessive  devotion  to  the  aesthetic  side  of  worship  will 
always  be  fraught  with  a  certain  peril  to  the  interests 
of  genuine  religion,  because  it  leads  the  individual  to 
ignore  the  essential  relation  of  worship  to  life.  Piety 
means  to  act  and  serve  as  well  as  to  contemplate  and 
enjoy.  In  some  instances  individuals  who  have  lost  all 


212      RELIGION:   ITS  NATURE  AND  RELATIONS 

faith  in  religious  doctrine  and  teaching  continue  to  find 
an  aesthetic  value  in  the  forms  and  the  ritual  of  religion, 
and  on  this  account  pay  it  the  tribute  of  an  outward 
respect.  In  these  cases,  though  the  form  of  religion 
survives,  the  function  has  vanished.  One  cannot  state 
the  truth  too  clearly,  that  if  art  is  to  co-operate  with 
religion  to  the  good  of  the  latter,  it  must  be  on  terms 
which  the  spiritual  interests  of  religion  prescribe.  As 
the  late  Bishop  Westcott  has  happily  put  it,  the  place 
and  office  of  art  in  religion  are  ministerial.  "  In  every 
form,  music,  painting,  sculpture,  it  must  point  beyond 
the  immediate  effect.  As  long  as  it  suggests  the  aspiration 
'  to  Thy  great  glory,  0  Lord,'  it  is  not  only  an  offering 
but  a  guide  and  a  support.  When  it  appears  to  be  an 
end  idolatry  has  begun." l  For  this  reason  the  association 
of  religion  with  realistic  and  sensational  forms  of  art 
which  aim  at  '  immediate  effect '  is  calculated  to  degrade 
and  not  to  help  religion ;  they  cannot  but  offend  and 
repel  a  spiritual  mind.  Such  art  may  be  congenial  to 
a  superstitious  and  orgiastic  cult,  but  it  cannot  minister 
to  pure  religion  and  undefiled.  Nevertheless  symbolic 
and  spiritually  suggestive  art  will  have  an  enduring 
religious  value,  for  it  is  prophetic  of  a  world  beyond 
the  veil  of  sense  and  a  faithful  minister  to  the  soul's 
converse  with  the  things  above.  Art,  like  religion  and 
morality,  springs  from  the  spiritual  element  in  human 
nature :  all  are  intimately  linked  with  the  purposive 
life  of  the  spirit  which  is  devoted  to  ideal  ends. 

0. — EELIGION  AND  CULTURE. 

We  can  now  try  to  gather  up  and  present  some 
general  conclusions  in  regard  to  the  place  of  religion 
in  the  life  of  culture.  That  religion  is  a  normal  aspect 
of  that  life  is  abundantly  plain,  and  will  only  be  denied 
by  those  who  cannot  see  the  facts  in  a  dispassionate 

1  Essay  on  "Christianity  and  Art,"  in  edition  of  the  Epistles  of  St.  John, 
p.  373. 


RELIGION    AND   CULTURE  213 

light.  Keligion  has  many  stages  and  forms,  and  its 
message  varies  when  we  pass  from  age  to  age  and  race 
to  race.  But  it  is  a  continuous  presence  among  men, 
and  whether  in  rude  and  stammering  tones  or  in  refined 
speech,  it  expresses  man's  answer  to  the  problem  of  his 
existence  and  his  destiny.  It  grows  just  because  it  is 
the  expression  of  the  human  spirit  which  is  involved  in 
a  process  of  growth.  The  course  of  development,  however, 
brings  with  it  expansion  and  articulation  of  the  structure 
of  society,  and  so  has  raised  the  question  of  the  way 
in  which  religion  is  distinguished  from  and  related  to 
the  other  elements  and  aspects  of  the  social  life.  Some 
answer  to  this  question  we  have  just  tried  to  give.  And 
I  trust  one  outcome  of  the  discussion  will  be,  to  set  the 
nature  of  religion  in  somewhat  sharper  relief.  For  the 
theory  is  perfectly  sound,  that  you  cannot  know  any 
one  thing  well  except  you  go  beyond  it  and  apprehend 
its  relations  to  other  things.  A  discussion  of  the  bearing 
of  religion  on  the  other  sides  of  the  social  life  is  at 
the  same  time  a  means  of  increasing  our  discernment 
of  its  proper  nature.  We  must,  however,  bear  in  mind 
that  the  distinction  of  factors  in  the  social  whole  does 
not  mean  their  separation.  Eeligion,  because  it  is  a 
factor  in  the  social  life,  must  interact  with  the  other 
factors,  both  giving  to  them  and  receiving  from  them. 
This  interaction  is  the  condition  of  development :  isolation 
means  the  failure  of  stimulus  and  consequent  stagnation. 

Nevertheless  it  is  true  and  important  that  religion, 
while  it  enters  into  and  plays  a  part  in  the  life  of  culture, 
cannot  be  fully  understood  and  characterised  in  terms  of 
that  culture.  In  other  words,  religion  cannot  be  adequately 
treated  as  a  phenomenon  whose  significance  is  exhausted 
by  its  office  in  the  structure  of  human  society.  The  point 
was  merely  mentioned  earlier  in  the  chapter,  and  I  now 
take  the  opportunity  of  making  some  further  observations. 
What  is  called  the  '  functional '  view  of  religion  at  present 
finds  favour  with  psychologists  and  sociologists.  It  seems 
to  bring  religion  into  line  with  the  evolutionary  process, 


214        RELIGION  :    ITS   NATURE   AND    RELATIONS 

and  to  give  it  a  biological  and  psychological  justification. 
Keligion  has  its  use  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  in  the 
endeavour  after  life-conservation.  For  it  imports  into 
society  certain  beliefs  and  sanctions  which  conduce  to 
social  efficiency ;  and  in  this,  rather  than  its  ultimate 
truth,  lies  its  value.  Religion,  it  is  urged,  is  the  offspring 
of  the  '  will  to  live ' — a  will  operative  in  the  beginnings 
of  culture  and  still  active  in  the  wider  system  of  civilised 
society.  Religion  functions  like  a  kind  of  protective 
variation  developed  by  the  social  organism  to  aid  it  in 
the  task  of  self-preservation.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  a 
functional  development  of  the  social  organism,  and,  like 
all  such  developments,  its  scope  and  meaning  are  to  be 
found  in  the  way  in  which  it  helps  to  vitalise  and  conserve 
the  parent  structure.  This  theory,  with  its  ostensible 
scientific  basis,  is  at  first  sight  plausible,  but  further  re- 
flexion discloses  serious  objections  to  it.  This  hypothesis, 
if  accepted,  reduces  religion  to  a  mere  means :  the  norm 
is  the  well-being  of  the  social  system,  which  is  made  the 
end  of  the  individual  life.  The  personal  and  inward  side 
of  religion  is  merged  and  lost  in  the  collective,  which  is 
represented  by  a  mundane  social  order.  It  is  relevant 
therefore  to  reply,  that  the  sociological  interpretation  of 
religion  does  injustice  to  the  inner  spirit  and  movement  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  For  that  movement,  which  is 
explicitly  revealed  in  the  Universal  Religions,  has  been  in 
the  direction  of  emphasising  the  inward  and  personal  aspect 
of  religion.  Christianity  teaches  that  the  value  of  the 
soul  cannot  be  measured  by  any  earthly  good  ;  and  while 
the  Christian  life  gams  content  in  moral  and  social  duties, 
it  has  a  personal  value  and  destiny  which  transcend  any 
given  social  system.  Unless,  then,  we  are  prepared  to 
discount  the  whole  tendency  and  aspiration  of  the  human 
spirit,  we  are  bound  to  proclaim  the  inadequacy  of  the 
sociological  theory  of  religion.  Whether  the  transcendent 
aspiration  of  the  religious  spirit  is  justified  is  another 
question,  but  that  it  belongs  to  the  meaning  of  religion 
revealed  in  its  development  cannot  fairly  be  denied.  And 


RELIGION   AND    CULTURE  215 

if  so,  you  set  out  from  an  arbitrary  and  defective  idea 
of  what  religion  is,  if  you  are  to  interpret  it  to  be  cer- 
tain beliefs  and  acts  imposed  by  society  on  its  members 
with  a  view  to  its  own  preservation  and  progress.  It  may 
be  true  that  these  beliefs  often  operate  in  the  manner 
described :  that,  of  course,  will  depend  on  the  type  of 
religion  to  which  they  belong  and  the  character  of  the 
particular  society  in  which  they  exist.  Where,  for  instance, 
religion  has  become  identified  with  habits  of  asceticism  and 
withdrawal  from  the  world,  we  cannot  call  it  a  useful 
social  function.  And  if  the  meaning  of  religion  were 
exhausted  by  its  social  function,  faith  which  goes  beyond  , 
the  world  would  lack  any  ground  for  its  rise  and  persistence,  v 
We  do  not  seem  to  enter  into  the  'true  inwardness*  of 
spiritual  religion,  unless  we  realise  that  it  carries  with  it 
the  denial  of  the  finality  and  sufficiency  of  the  earthly  and 
temporal  order  of  things.  It  is  only  up  to  a  point  that 
you  can  understand  religion  as  a  serviceable  factor  in 
human  culture.  For  human  culture  is  not  the  ultimate 
ground  and  standard  of  spiritual  value. 

But  if  the  goal  to  which  religion  points  does  not  fall 
within  the  system  of  culture,  its  bearing  on  the  elements 
of  that  system  is  none  the  less  intimate.  Spiritual  religion 
is  characterised  by  comprehensiveness  of  outlook,  and 
nothing  in  the  wide  field  of  human  activity  is  alien  to  it. 
Its  interest  is  in  life  and  the  ultimate  meaning  and  destiny 
of  life ;  so  it  seeks  to  connect  the  multiplicity  of  human 
ends  with  man's  supreme  vocation  of  realising  his  religious 
end.  Man's  varied  interests,  scientific,  aesthetic,  ethical,  and 
social,  are  all  valid  and  worthy ;  yet  the  message  of  religion  / 
is  that  he  must  not  rest  in  them,  but  move  through  them 
to  a  satisfaction  of  his  nature  more  complete  and  funda- 
mental. That  satisfaction,  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  it  is 
so  comprehensive,  will  be  correspondingly  rich  and  full, 
and  no  side  of  his  spiritual  nature  should  be  suppressed  or 
mutilated.  Thought,  feeling,  and  will  all  go  to  the  making 
of  religion,  and  in  the  final  good  of  the  soul  each  must  come 
to  its  due.  But  that  this  goal  lies  beyond  the  temporal 


216       RELIGION  I    ITS   NATURE   AND   RELATIONS 

and  sensuous  limitations  of  our  present  existence-form  is 
the  message  of  higher  religion.  Hence  religion  by  its  ideal 
scope  and  meaning  distinguishes  itself  from  the  other  phases 
of  culture.  The  latter  are  directed  to  lesser  ends  and 
governed  by  narrower  interests,  and  for  this  reason  they 
can  be  embraced  in  the  supreme  end  given  by  religion. 
Through  the  various  forms  of  culture  man  can  promote  the 
growth  and  fulness  of  his  life :  in  religion  he  finds  the 
meaning  and  purpose  of  life  itself. 

I  would  follow  out  this  line  of  thought  by  suggesting 
that  the  purely  historic  treatment  of  religion  is  not  in 
itself  sufficient.  The  value  of  such  a  treatment  within  its 
limits  is  transparent  and  not  to  be  gainsaid.  Indeed  the 
study  of  the  empirical  sources  and  the  conditions  under 
which  a  religion  develops  in  time,  is  indispensable  to  its 
full  understanding.  For  religion,  being  a  factor  in  culture, 
is  a  continuous  growth,  and  influences  from  the  past  and 
present  give  form  and  colour  to  the  spiritual  consciousness. 
In  the  case  of  religions  which  have  been  founded,  the 
historical  facts  in  connexion  with  their  foundation  are  very 
important  and  influential.  Yet  the  attempt  to  make  a 
single  historic  period  the  exclusive  and  exhaustive  test  and 
norm  of  what  a  religion  ought  always  to  be  has  led  to 
many  difficulties  and  perplexities.  For  religion  is  affected 
by  the  evolution  of  the  culture-system  in  which  it  plays  a 
part ;  and  the  endeavour  to  make  an  earlier  phase  the 
complete  type  for  a  later  has  led  to  much  perverted 
ingenuity,  insincerity,  and  the  suppression  of  conviction. 
People  who  set  out  to  find  in  the  past  an  explanation  and 
justification  for  what  is  done  in  the  present  can  generally 
find  what  they  seek.  It  is  notorious,  for  example,  how 
widely  divergent  Christian  sects  can  justify  their  existence 
from  the  pages  of  Scripture.  In  this  way  meanings  and 
ideas  have  been  read  into  the  beginnings  of  a  religion  which, 
it  is  safe  to  say,  were  remote  from  the  minds  of  its  founder 
and  his  followers.  This  method,  though  it  pretends  to  be 
historical,  is  really  unhistorical ;  and  the  norm  by  which  its 
votaries  judge  and  justify,  while  nominally  simple  and  well- 


RELIGION   AND   CULTURE  217 

defined,  is  in  practice  too  elastic  to  be  trustworthy.  It  is 
often  difficult  to  say  where  history  ends  and  legend  begins, 
as  the  modern  mind  is  coming  to  recognise.  But  even 
when  you  have  succeeded  in  determining  certain  facts  to  be 
historic,  it  is  a  fallacy  to  suppose  that  these  facts  must 
have  a  certain  fixed  value  for  every  system  of  culture. 
Value  is  not  a  stereotyped  magnitude  apart  from  the 
spiritual  life  of  persons  and  the  system  in  which  they  live 
and  move.  The  past  as  it  is  in  itself  is  elusive ;  it  comes 
to  us  reflected  in  the  spiritual  life  of  the  present.  How 
else  can  we  explain  those  subtle  variations  of  the  religious 
ideal  which  have  marked  the  historic  development  of  a 
religion  !  The  image  of  the  past,  as  Eucken  has  said,  takes 
different  forms  according  to  the  conviction  of  spiritual  truth 
in  the  present.1  Even  the  intuition  of  genius  cannot 
restore  to  us  the  very  form  and  pressure  of  a  bygone  age's 
life,  and  historic  facts  only  become  significant  for  us  in  the 
medium  of  present  values. 

I  will  conclude  this  chapter  by  referring  to  another 
fallacy.  Those  who  regard  religion  as  a  function  of  society 
and  a  mere  phase  of  human  culture  often  justify  themselves 
by  explaining  its  growth  and  changes  through  the  category 
of  causality.  The  onward  movement  and  the  variations 
of  religion  are  assumed  to  be  so  many  effects  which  can 
be  referred  for  explanation  to  its  past  history  and  its 
present  environment.  Social  and  economic  conditions, 
past  and  present,  are  hypostatised  as  influences  which 
somehow  bring  about  changes  in  religion.  Now  in  what 
sense  the  past  can  be  a  cause  remains  quite  obscure,  and 
to  regard  religion  as  a  kind  of  substance  which  can  receive 
and  reveal  influences  imparted  to  it  from  without,  is  a 
fallacy  whose  grossness  is  concealed  by  a  familiar  habit  of 
language.  The  word  influence  is  a  very  convenient  one ; 
but  it  is  used  loosely,  and  it  is  sometimes  necessary  to  ask 
ourselves  what  we  mean  when  we  use  it.  For  there  is  a 
way  of  mistaking  words  for  realities  which  is  a  constant 
source  of  error  and  confusion.  What  then  do  we  mean 

1  Hauptprdbleme  der  ReligionspJiilosophie,  p.  61. 


218       RELIGION:    ITS   NATURE   AND    RELATIONS 

when  we  speak  of  an  influence  on  religion  ?  If  we  consider 
what  we  say,  we  recognise  that  religion  is  not  an  object 
but  an  aspect  of  the  mind,  not  a  substance  but  a  form 
of  spiritual  life.  An  influence  on  religion  is  therefore 
neither  more  nor  less  than  an  influence  on  religious  persons. 
Now,  when  we  talk  of  an  influence  on  the  mind,  the  analogy 
of  one  body  producing  an  effect  upon  another  is  quite  out 
of  place :  the  principle  of  mechanical  connexion  does  not 
rule  in  the  realm  of  spirit.  What  we  call  an  effect  in  this 
reference  is  really  a  responsive  activity  of  the  human  mind : 
the  influence  so  called  is  made  an  influence  by  the  working 
of  the  mind.  Hence  the  scientific  method  which  spells 
out  external  causes  for  the  making  of  religion  is  reversing 
the  true  order.  These  so-called  causes  depend  for  their 
influence  on  the  human  spirit  which  invests  them  with 
meaning  and  vitality.  Apart  from  the  living  minds  of 
men  they  would  cease  to  be  real  and  effective.  Therefore 
the  centre  and  source  of  the  activity  from  which  religious 
phenomena  proceed  must  be  found  in  personal  spirits  who 
are  religious.  Hence  every  attempt  to  explain  and  construe 
spiritual  movements  in  society  through  subpersonal  cate- 
gories will  fail  in  the  end.  This  will  appear  more  clearly 
in  the  discussion  of  religious  development  which  follows. 

If  one  were  to  use  an  image  to  suggest  the  significance 
of  religion  in  culture,  it  would  be  the  image  of  the  soul 
and  body.  The  culture-system  is,  so  to  speak,  the  organism, 
and  religion  is  the  inspiring  spirit  which  gives  meaning 
and  direction  to  the  whole.  In  themselves  the  various 
factors  of  the  social  life  may  be  regarded  as  means  to  the 
realisation  of  the  higher  values.  It  is  the  characteristic 
of  spiritual  religion  to  relate  the  values  realised  in  human 
life  to  an  ultimate  and  supreme  Value.  This  final  Value 
is  not  a  temporal  but  a  transcendent  Good.  Hence 
religion,  while  it  vitalises  human  culture,  also  points  to  a 
goal  beyond  tins  temporal  order  of  things. 


CHAPTER  V. 

EELIGIOUS  DEVELOPMENT. 

IT  is  a  common  observation  that  you  only  know  how 
much  is  in  a  thing  when  you  see  what  comes  out  of  it. 
The  seed  reveals  its  nature  in  the  plant,  and  the  infant 
is  explained  by  the  full-grown  man.  Things,  so  to  speak, 
disclose  themselves  in  the  course  of  their  working,  and 
the  more  we  know  about  their  way  of  working  the  better 
we  seem  to  know  the  things.  To  put  it  tersely,  we  come 
to  understand  objects  by  studying  their  evolution.  The 
wide  vogue  of  the  evolutionary  method  was  a  cardinal 
feature  of  scientific  and  philosophic  thought  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  and  the  method  was  rich  in  suggestion 
and  fruitful  in  results.  For  if  evolution  did  not  solve 
the  problem  of  origins,  it  cast  a  new  and  welcome  light 
on  the  presence  as  well  as  the  function  and  value  of  many 
of  the  characters  which  distinguish  various  forms  of  organic 
beings.  What  was  unintelligible  on  the  assumption  of  the 
fixity  of  types  became  intelligible  from  the  point  of  view 
of  development.  Inspired  by  the  triumphs  achieved, 
hopeful  people  spoke  as  if  evolution  was  a  key  to  all 
mysteries ;  and  a  method  worked  with  success  in  the 
realm  of  nature  was  boldly  applied  in  the  social  and 
spiritual  sphere.  Nor  is  there  any  need  to  cavil  at  the 
extension  of  a  method  successfully  followed  in  one  sphere 
to  another,  provided  you  are  clear  about  the  meaning  of 
the  terms  you  use  and  can  justify  the  way  in  which  you 
apply  them.  Unfortunately  in  the  case  of  words  which 
are  in  the  mouth  of  every  one,  usage  easily  becomes  loose 
and  significance  ill-defined ;  and  names  like  *  evolution ' 

219 


220  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

and  '  development/  in  popular  and  even  in  scientific  writ- 
ing, have  not  a  certain  connotation.  When  we  speak  of  the 
development  of  a  plant,  a  man,  and  a  religion,  it  is  essential 
to  remember  that  we  do  not  mean  exactly  the  same  thing 
in  each  case.  The  subject  is  one  on  which  we  must  try 
to  think  clearly,  and  so  I  shall  begin  by  discussing  briefly 

A. — THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  SPIRITUAL  DEVELOPMENT. 

By  spiritual  development  I  mean  the  development  of 
human  minds  and  wills,  in  contrast  to  the  form  of  growth 
which  obtains  in  the  animal  and  vegetable  world.  It  is 
necessary  that  we  should  distinguish  the  one  from  the 
other,  for  the  meaning  of  the  process  is  not  the  same  in 
each  case.  When  we  are  dealing  with  history  we  are 
dealing  with  that  of  which  the  essence  is  psychical  process 
in  men ;  and,  as  was  pointed  out  at  the  close  of  the 
preceding  chapter,  these  processes  cannot  be  understood 
from  the  naturalistic  standpoint.  Some  have  been  inclined 
to  believe  that  in  the  movements  of  history  and  the  growth 
of  society  the  operations  of  desires  and  motives  could  be 
construed  by  extending  the  principle  of  cause  and  effect  which 
worked  in  a  fixed  and  necessary  way  in  the  natural  world. 
To  naturalistic  and  positivist  writers  the  idea  was  congenial, 
and  the  uniformities  of  society  were  thought  to  be  no 
more  than  an  amplification  of  the  reign  of  law  in  nature. 
J.  S.  Mill,  in  his  Logic,  has  given  us  an  outline  of  the 
application  of  scientific  logic  to  the  moral  sciences,  and 
writers  like  Comte  and  Herbert  Spencer  treated  the 
question  from  the  same  standpoint.  Of  course  it  was 
apparent  that  social  and  historical  phenomena  could  not 
be  predicted  with  anything  like  the  accuracy  of  natural 
phenomena.  A  revolution  cannot  be  foretold  like  an 
eclipse.  But  it  was  possible  to  invoke  the  science  of 
Statistics  to  show  certain  broad  uniformities  did  exist, 
and  it  was  open  to  suggest  that  failure  to  predict  was 
due  to  the  great  complexity  of  the  causes  which  were 
involved.  The  difficulty,  so  Mill  asserted,  was  the  same 


NATURE   OF   SPIRITUAL   DEVELOPMENT  221 

difficulty  which  existed  in  meteorology  ;  and  as  in  the  latter 
increasing  knowledge  of  the  complicated  causes  would 
yield  increasing  accuracy  of  foreknowledge,  so  would  it  be 
in  the  domain  of  society.  In  the  result,  historic  and  social 
phenomena  were  claimed  to  be  an  extension  of  the  same 
necessarily  determined  order  of  events  and  amenable  to 
the  same  treatment  by  strictly  scientific  methods. 

The  weakness  of  this  theory  was  its  defective  psychology, 
and  its  imperfect  conception  of  what  spiritual  activity 
really  meant.  Human  motives  were  thought  to  be  the 
natural  reaction  of  the  mind  on  the  environment:  they 
reflected  the  conditions  and  circumstances  in  which  men 
were  placed,  and  operated  with  unfailing  regularity  in 
bringing  about  fixed  results.  The  dependence  of  desires 
and  motives  on  self-consciousness  for  their  character  was 
ignored ;  motives  and  actions  were  illegitimately  identified 
with  causes  and  effects ;  man's  self-determining  function 
was  misunderstood,  and  he  was  reduced  to  a  link  in  the 
chain  of  events.  A  truer  psychology  shows  that  mechanical 
causation  is  inapplicable  to  spiritual  process,  and  the  man 
himself  makes  his  motives.  But  if  man  is  not  determined 
from  without,  if  he  determines  himself,  then  the  attempt 
to  bring  the  historic  process  into  line  with  the  natural 
must  break  down.  For  the  cardinal  fact  of  the  freedom 
of  the  self  has  not  received  due  recognition,  and  the  place 
of  the  will  in  development  has  not  been  understood. 

In  contrast  to  the  naturalistic  conception  of  develop- 
ment is  the  idealistic.  The  idealist  approaches  the 
problem  from  the  other  side.  The  term  '  idealist '  is 
vague,  but  what  I  refer  to  is  the  type  of  idealism  which 
had  its  beginnings  in  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and,  continued 
by  Leibniz,  found  its  fullest  expression  in  the  work  of 
Hegel.  Aristotle  had  conceived  the  process  of  organic 
growth  to  be  the  realisation  of  a  typical  form  potential  in 
the  germ  (Swa/iet),  and  passing  through  a  series  of  fixed 
stages  to  its  expression  in  the  fully  articulated  individual 
(evepyeia).  Here  the  controlling  principle  is  teleological, 
a  final  cause  (TO  ov  eVe/ca),  not  a  mechanical.  In  his 


222  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

theory  of  the  monad,  a  simple  substance  essentially  active, 
Leibniz  employed  the  Aristotelian  conceptions  of  potenti- 
ality and  actuality.  From  the  first  the  monad  was  poten- 
tially all  it  came  to  be,  and  by  a  determinate  and 
continuous  course  of  development  it  actively  evolved  the 
whole  wealth  of  its  experience.  The  Leibnizian  notion  of 
spiritual  development  was  strictly  individualistic ;  and 
naturally  so,  for  the  system  excluded  interaction,  and  '  the 
monads  had  no  windows/  It  was  reserved  for  Hegel  to 
make  a  large  and  impressive  endeavour  to  apply  an 
idealistic  theory  of  development  to  social  and  historical 
phenomena ;  and  the  Hegelian  philosophy  of  history  is  a 
justification  of  the  fine  saying  of  Leibniz — "  The  present 
is  great  with  the  past  and  full  of  the  future."  Into  the 
details  of  Hegel's  historical  philosophy  I  cannot  enter,  and 
I  will  confine  myself  to  one  aspect  of  his  theory  of 
spiritual  development.  Hegel  believed  that  if  you  regard 
the  history  of  mankind,  or  if  you  turn  to  some  specific 
aspect  of  culture,  say  Law,  Religion,  or  Philosophy,  you 
will  find  that  development  in  each  case  follows  a 
determinate  order  and  moves  dialectically  to  its  pre- 
determined goal.  That  goal  was  implicit  in  the  beginning, 
and  each  stage  of  evolution  was  in  necessary  relation  to  the 
past  and  to  the  future.  Hence  spiritual  evolution  for  Hegel 
was  a  movement  in  which  the  whole  wealth  of  meaning  im- 
manent in  the  germ  gradually  explicated  itself  and  came 
to  its  fruition.  There  is  nothing  contingent  in  the 
process :  each  stage  is  part  of  a  dialectical  structure,  and 
is  conditioned  by  what  has  gone  before  and  by  what  is  to 
come.  The  Hegelian  conception  of  historical  development 
has  fascinated  and  inspired  many  minds.  It  rightly 
recognises  that  the  movement  of  history  cannot  be  under- 
stood from  the  naturalistic  standpoint:  the  controlling 
power  is  always  mind  or  spirit,  which  is  self-determined, 
and  embraces  the  so-called  natural  order  within  itself. 
Hegel  also  emphasises  the  truth,  that  there  must  be  con- 
tinuity in  the  process  if  there  is  to  be  meaning  in  it.  And 
finally,  he  insists  that  the  goal  cannot  be  problematic  or 


NATURE   OF   SPIRITUAL   DEVELOPMENT  223 

uncertain,  if  reason  is  supreme  and  immanent  in  the 
world.  On  the  other  hand,  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  a 
whole-hearted  acceptance  of  the  theory  are  very  great.  I 
shall  say  nothing  at  present  of  the  ambiguous  and 
thoroughly  unsatisfactory  manner  in  which  Hegel  speaks  of 
the  process  advancing  stage  by  stage  in  time,  and  then, 
when  seen  sub  specie  ceternitatis,  as  timelessly  complete. 
But  it  ought  to  be  noticed  that,  on  the  Hegelian  view, 
historic  development,  though  spiritual,  is  still  rigidly 
determined  and  admits  of  no  contingency  at  any  point. 
The  process  is  conscious,  but  it  runs  on  with  the 
mechanical  fixity  of  a  machine.  You  cannot  consistently 
carry  out  this  conception  in  practice  without  robbing 
history  of  its  human  interest  and  value,  without  turning 
it  into  a  dreary  pageant  where  the  actors  recite  mechani- 
cally the  words  prepared  for  them.  Hence  the  value  of 
personal  initiative  does  not  receive  full  recognition,  and 
historic  personalities  become  merely  the  instruments  of  the 
collective  will.  Moreover,  the  sin,  failure,  and  loss  which 
play  so  large  a  part  in  the  human  drama  are  transformed 
into  a  process  of  good  in  the  making :  if  we  only  knew  it, 
they  are  helpful  elements  in  a  world  where  everything  is 
for  the  best — a  gospel  which  would  be  comforting  if  it 
could  be  reconciled  with  facts.  There  is  also  another 
difficulty  which  it  is  important  for  us  to  note  in  the 
present  connexion.  Hegel  seems  to  have  thought  that 
dialectic  development  is  a  feature  both  of  culture  as  a 
whole,  and  of  the  different  factors  within  the  life  of 
culture.  Historic  culture  develops  dialectically,  we  are 
told,  and  so  do  its  specific  phases,  such  as  religion  and 
philosophy,  which  have  their  own  stages  of  evolution. 
The  part  no  doubt  must  share  the  movement  of  the  whole, 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  the  two  movements  are  parallel. 
Is  the  assumed  dialectical  development  of  culture 
necessarily  present  in  its  differentiations  ?  It  appears  to 
us  to  be  wrong  to  suppose  that  philosophy  or  religion 
determines  the  form  of  its  own  development  apart  from 
interaction  with  the  life  of  society.  For  the  social  life  is 


J 
\ 


224  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

more  than  a  supporting  environment  to  religion  ;  it  often 
goes  far  to  determine  the  particular  forms  which  religion 
assumes.  To  put  the  case  in  another  way  :  we  say  that 
spiritual  development  is  not  of  ideas  but  in  minds  ;  and  no 
aspect  of  the  mind  develops  apart  from  the  rest.  Let  it 
be  freely  granted  that  human  minds  evolve  and  transmit 
philosophical  and  religious  ideas  in  a  connected  fashion, 
the  truth  remains  that  these  ideas  are  not  merely  related 
the  one  to  the  other,  but  are  influenced  always  by  the  total 
contents  of  consciousness.  Or,  what  comes  to  the  same 
thing,  the  development  of  religion  in  society  is  constantly 
affected  by  interaction  with  other  elements  within  the 
social  system  :  it  is  not  a  movement  whose  explanation 
lies  wholly  within  itself. 

The  foregoing  critical  remarks  will  perhaps  serve  to 
show  the  direction  in  which,  as  we  think,  a  truer  notion  of 
spiritual  development  is  to  be  found.  The  explanation 
we  are  seeking  must  in  the  first  instance  be  based  on  the 
psychical  nature  of  man,  for  the  core  of  the  historic 
process  is  the  activity  of  personal  minds.  The  secret  of 
spiritual  progress  is  not  to  be  traced  to  general  principles 
or  categories,  but  to  the  character  and  working  of  those 
individual  centres  of  experience  that  constitute  society. 
It  is  a  complete  reversal  of  the  true  method  of  historic 
explanation  to  formulate  laws  of  progress,  and  then  to  try 
to  show  that  social  evolution  must  conform  to  them. 
Laws  can  only  be  general  statements  based  on  experience. 
Even  in  the  physical  world,  laws  are  just  generalised 
expressions  for  observed  uniformities  ;  and  in  the  spiritual 
world  these  uniformities  are  less  rigorously  fulfilled,  and 
may  more  fitly  be  termed  general  tendencies.  These 
tendencies  are  the  outcome  and  expression  of  personal 
minds  working  together,  and  are  not  in  any  sense  prior  to 
them.  What  then  are  the  features  of  psychical  life  of 
which  spiritual  development  is  the  issue  ?  Beyond  a 
doubt  a  central  feature  of  life,  and  especially  of  conscious 
life,  is  its  purposive  character  :  it  is  quite  inexplicable  by 
the  action  of  some  vis  a  tergo.  Even  in  the  lower 


NATURE   OF   SPIRITUAL   DEVELOPMENT  225 

organisms,  reactions  are  purposive  in  the  sense  that  they 
are  directed  to  the  conservation  of  life,  and  the  whole 
working  of  instinct  has  reference  to  individual  and  racial 
ends.  Out  of  instinct,  by  a  continuous  process  of  growth, 
has  emerged  the  higher  purposive  activity  which  involves 
reflexion  and  deliberation,  and,  in  the  case  of  civilised 
man,  takes  the  form  of  direction  to  far-reaching  ends 
and  ideal  aims.  This  forward-looking  tendency  is  a  note 
of  all  life,  but  when  we  descend  the  scale  of  culture 
the  instinctive  aspect  prevails  more  and  more  over  the 
reflective.  The  purposive  must  not  be  identified  with  the 
deliberate.  The  great  mass  of  our  social  heritage  has  been 
the  fruit,  not  of  clear-sighted  invention,  but  of  a  spon- 
taneous growth  where  selection  worked  with  no  prevision 
of  distant  issues.  Perhaps  the  most  important  of  the 
instruments  of  human  culture  is  language ;  and  the  point 
before  us  could  not  be  better  illustrated  than  by  the 
evolution  of  language,  which  was  the  outcome  of  a  con- 
tinuous and  almost  unconscious  process  of  adjustment  to 
human  needs.  The  same  is  true  to  a  large  extent  of 
custom  and  social  organisation.  In  these  cases,  though 
the  result  was  not  the  object  of  conscious  design,  still  it 
was  the  fruit  of  a  silent  process  of  selection  and  preference 
carried  out  in  detail,  and  the  complete  structure  is  justly 
termed  a  teleological  whole.  Social  growths,  therefore, 
must  be  judged  teleologically,  and  this  because  the  activity 
of  the  formative  factor  is  purposive  throughout.  Purpose, 
then,  is  inherent  in  the  spiritual  development  of  man,  but 
the  purpose  only  rises  to  clear  consciousness  in  the  later 
stages  of  development. 

Scientific  causality,  we  have  already  argued,  does  not 
suffice  to  explain  historic  phenomena.  When  we  are 
dealing  with  purposive  movements  the  category  by  which 
we  judge  will  be  that  of  value ;  for  ends  which  are 
objects  of  endeavour  are  values,  and  the  means  which 
lead  to  their  attainment  become  secondary  or  instrumental 
values.  To  decide,  therefore,  whether  a  given  movement  is 
progressive  or  no  is  to  answer  the  question  whether  it 


226  RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT 

reveals  an  increasing  value  or  not.  But  we  cannot  fix 
values  without  some  standard  of  value  by  which  we 
determine  the  relative  worth  of  different  stages  of  the 
movement.  So,  in  the  long  run,  we  must  have  some 
ultimate  value  which  will  form  the  basis  and  test  of  the 
system  of  values  which  we  apply  to  experience.  The 
philosopher,  at  all  events,  who  wants  to  go  to  the  root  of 
things,  recognises  the  need,  though  the  ordinary  historian 
may  not  raise  the  question.  The  latter  is  often  content 
to  form  his  appreciation  of  a  movement  or  an  epoch 
by  reference  to  some  idea  of  value  more  or  less  current, 
such  as  individual  liberty  or  collective  happiness  ;  and  so 
competent  historians  sometimes  differ  very  widely  in  their 
valuation  of  a  historic  episode.  The  reason  is  they  appeal 
to  different  standards  of  value.  Thus  one  writer  hails 
the  Eeformation  as  a  great  spiritual  emancipation,  while 
another  sees  in  it  the  seeds  of  religious  disintegration  and 
decay.  Hence  different  schools  of  historians  may  apply 
different  principles  of  valuation,  and  the  question  of 
ultimate  consistency  will  fall  into  the  background.  On 
the  other  hand,  when  we  take  up  the  large  problem  of  the 
reality  and  continuity  of  spiritual  development,  the  need 
for  a  consistent  principle  which  will  ensure  consistent 
judgments  is  apparent.  It  is  not  enough,  for  instance,  to 
declare,  that  from  one  point  of  view  a  movement  spells 
progress  and  from  another  decline.  We  wish  to  know 
which  point  of  view  is  the  more  adequate  and  upon 
which  side  the  verdict  falls.  Moreover,  although  you 
determine  that  certain  epochs  are  progressive  when 
judged  in  relation  to  others,  this  is  not  sufficient  to  show 
that  the  whole  movement  is  one  of  progress.  To  make 
sure  of  this  we  must  be  sure  that  there  is  a  continuity  in 
the  process,  that  values  realised  are  conserved,  and  that 
the  end  is  better  than  the  beginning.  A  comprehensive 
judgment  of  this  kind  will  always  be  difficult :  it  is  not 
possible  unless  the  thinker  has  an  ultimate  standard  of 
value  which  he  can  apply  all  along  the  line,  and  so  be  able 
to  say  that,  though  certain  epochs  are  reactionary  and 


NATURE   OF   SPIRITUAL   DEVELOPMENT  227 

retrograde,  the  movement  in  its  totality  is  progressive. 
We  are  driven,  therefore,  beyond  the  relative  point  of  view 
to  one  which  we  take  to  be  final  and  complete.  But  here 
again  we  are  confronted  with  a  problem  to  the  perplexing 
nature  of  which  I  have  already  referred  in  the  previous 
chapter.  I  mean  the  difficulty  of  forming  a  coherent 
conception  of  the  ultimate  value  or  ideal  which  is  the  goal 
of  human  development.  Temporal  process  enters  into  the 
substance  of  history,  and  if  historic  values  are  to  be 
conserved,  time  cannot  be  made  fictitious  or  illusory.  Yet 
no  ideal  state  under  the  present  time-form  would  finally 
satisfy  the  desires  and  aspirations  of  human  nature  as  we 
know  it ;  and  we  cannot  consistently  conceive  an  unending 
movement  to  be  the  best.  If  there  be  an  answer  to  this 
problem  it  must  be  found  in  the  region  of  metaphysics,  and 
into  this  domain  the  study  of  spiritual  development  brings 
us  at  the  last. 

There  is  a  further  truth  which  calls  for  emphasis  in 
this  preliminary  statement.  We  cannot  appeal  to  some 
immanent  principle  which  guarantees  progress,  and  by  its 
working  carries  society  inevitably  forward  to  some  high 
destiny.  Some  speak  glibly  as  if  progress  were  a  law  of 
human  history ;  but  no  dispassionate  study  of  the  facts 
will  justify  this  assertion.  If  civilisations  expand  and 
blossom  they  also  decay  and  dissolve,  and  visible  gains 
are  balanced  by  obvious  losses.1  Progress,  we  may  well 
agree,  there  has  been  in  the  past,  but  it  has  not  been  the 
outcome  of  any  iron  law ;  it  is  the  fruit  of  human  wills 
freely  dedicating  themselves  to  the  good  and  accepting  for 
their  task  the  work  of  making  things  better.  Develop- 
ment is  the  product  not  of  laws  but  of  persons,  and  it 
carries  within  it  the  witness  of  spiritual  freedom.  Progress, 
indeed,  postulates  human  capacities  and  the  call  to  realise 
them.  With  the  individual,  however,  rests  the  free  will  to 
rise  to  the  fulness  of  his  vocation  or  to  fall  below  it ;  and 
the  spiritual  development  of  society  depends  on  the  right 

1  An  eminent  historian   of  our  time  has  said,    that  the  progress  of 
civilisation  is  matter  of  faith  rather  than  knowledge. 


228  RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT 

use  of  freedom  in  its  members.  On  the  higher  levels  of 
civilisation  historic  movements  are  self-conscious  processes, 
working  themselves  out  in  a  series  of  oppositions  and 
conflicts,  and  these  sometimes  attain  the  most  far-reaching 
significance.  Such  historic  crises  can  only  be  brought  to 
a  successful  issue  under  the  guidance  of  great  personalities 
who  see  further  than  common  men  and  act  more  decisively. 
The  future  depends  on  whether  the  need  of  a  people  can 
call  forth  these  illuminating  minds  and  directing  wills,  who 
conquer  opposition  and  lead  the  way  to  an  ampler  spiritual 
good.  It  is  an  undue  optimism  to  say  that  a  society  in 
its  day  of  stress  always  produces  the  man  who  can  rise  to 
the  height  of  the  occasion  and  turn  it  to  gain.  Years 
come  when  there  is  no  longer  any  *  open  vision ' :  the 
hour  strikes  but  the  man  does  not  step  forth.  In  these 
days  of  decline  the  spiritual  forces  run  low  and  society 
lives  on  the  heritage  of  the  past.  This  dependence  of 
progress  on  formative  and  governing  minds  serves  to  show 
that  spiritual  development  is  a  task  man  must  take  upon 
himself,  and  to  which  he  must  dedicate  his  powers.  The 
ideal  is  not  an  impersonal  force  moulding  human  wills  to 
its  use :  it  only  '  moves  as  object  of  desire,'  and  it  only  pre- 
vails when  men  love  it  and  freely  devote  themselves  to  it. 

B. — THE  KELIGIOUS  DEVELOPMENT  OF  MAN. 

Religious  development  is  a  phase  or  special  case  of 
spiritual  development,  and  the  general  features  which 
characterise  the  latter  are  also  present  in  the  former. 
Though  we  commonly  speak  of  the  development  of  religion, 
if  we  are  to  be  accurate  we  ought  rather  to  say  the  re- 
ligious development  of  man.  For  it  is  man  who  develops 
religion,  and  he  develops  it  as  an  element  in  his  complex 
spiritual  life.  Religion,  then,  which  is  a  characteristic 
activity  of  the  human  mind,  shares  the  mind's  growth 
and  is  subject  to  interaction  with  the  other  mental 
elements.  Like  all  spiritual  development  it  is  a  develop- 
ment in  persons,  and  must  in  the  first  instance  be 


RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT   OF    MAN  229 

interpreted  psychologically.  It  follows,  therefore,  that  any 
attempt  to  isolate  religion  and  to  treat  it  as  though  it  had 
an  independent  and  immanent  law  of  growth  within  itself 
cannot  succeed.  This  method  involves  a  false  abstraction 
at  the  outset,  and  it  introduces  into  the  subject  an 
artificial  simplicity  which  does  not  correspond  to  the  con- 
crete facts  of  experience.  The  human  spirit  which  is  re- 
ligious is  also  active  in  science  and  art,  in  ethics  and  social 
life;  and  these  manifold  activities  interact  and  influence 
one  another.  For  example,  we  find  features  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  religion  which  are  not  to  be  explained  directly  by 
religious  motives :  they  are  due  to  the  pressure  of  scientific 
or  ethical  ideas,  or  are  the  result  of  social  changes. 

When  we  speak  of  development  we  make  certain 
postulates :  we  postulate  something  which  can  be  regarded 
as  a  whole  or  unity;  we  postulate  a  continuity  in  the 
process  of  change  within  the  whole,  so  that  each  step  in 
the  process  is  connected  with  what  goes  before  and  what 
comes  after ;  and  lastly,  we  postulate  that  the  movement 
reveals  a  growth  in  value.1  It  is  easily  apparent  that  if 
any  of  these  conditions  is  absent,  the  idea  of  a  develop- 
ment disappears.  A  system  which  continuously  deteriorated, 
or  a  series  of  unconnected  movements,  could  not  be  said  to 
develop.  In  regard  to  the  first  postulate,  the  subject  of 
religious  development,  its  nature  will  depend  on  the 
purpose  we  have  on  hand :  it  may  be  a  tribal  group  or  it 
may  be  a  nation  in  which  we  desire  to  show  that  there  has 
been  a  progress  in  religious  ideas,  and  in  these  cases  the 
unity  to  which  reference  is  made  is  sufficiently  clear.  The 
case  is  more  difficult  when  we  speak  of  the  religious 
development  of  man,  for  the  unity  we  presuppose  is  not 
well-defined  in  space  or  time.  Comparatively  isolated  and 
backward  human  groups  have  existed  and  still  exist,  and 
the  point  we  select  for  a  beginning  from  which  to  trace  the 
process  must  be  more  or  less  arbitrary.  Some  groups  do 
not  advance,  and  in  certain  cases  show  tokens  of  deteriora- 
tion, while  in  other  social  systems  it  may  be  hard  to 
1  Cp.  Simmel,  Probleme  der  GeschicJitsphilosophie,  p.  148  ff. 


230  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

decide  whether  there  has  been  spiritual  progress  or  not. 
Hence  a  phrase  like  '  the  religious  development  of 
humanity '  can  never  be  strictly  accurate.  Still  we  may 
defend  the  use  of  the  phrase  if  there  have  been  contact  and 
interaction  of  groups  over  a  wide  area,  and  if  these  peoples 
reveal  in  their  history  a  continuity  and  growth  of  religious 
beliefs  and  practices.  Even  though  this  history  contains 
periods  of  decadence  and  reaction,  if  they  fall  within  and 
are  subordinated  to  the  larger  movement  of  progress,  it 
will  still  be  admissible  to  speak  of  religious  development. 
The  essential  point  is  that  there  be  a  continuity  between 
the  past  and  present,  for  this  makes  it  possible  to  regard 
the  process  as  a  whole  and  to  compare  one  stage  with 
another. 

Let  us  now  consider  what  is  meant  by  continuity  in 
religious  development.  The  analogy  of  the  individual 
mind  may  help  us  here.  In  the  matter  of  language, 
customs,  and  ideas,  the  single  mind  essentially  depends  on 
its  social  environment,  and  would  be  powerless  without 
its  spiritual  heritage  from  the  past.  It  constantly  absorbs 
and  receives  stimulus  from  an  intellectual  atmosphere 
which  it  did  not  create,  and  apart  from  which  it  could  not 
live.  But  the  individual  spirit  also  reacts  on  its  social 
inheritance,  exercises  some  selection  on  it,  and  is  not  at 
every  point  rigidly  determined  by  it.  Within  the  limits 
prescribed  by  general  conditions,  a  principle  of  freedom  is 
at  work  which  forbids  us  to  find  the  sufficient  reason  for 
every  individual  development  in  what  has  gone  before. 
The  self-conscious  will  does  not  create  the  possibilities  of 
its  own  development :  these  are  given  by  its  own  character 
in  relation  to  its  environment.  But  it  can  to  some 
extent  determine  what  possibilities  are  to  become  actual, 
and  in  this  way  combines  in  its  action  the  principles  of 
continuity  and  freedom.  This  illustration  from  the  in- 
dividual suggests  how  we  should  approach  the  larger 
problem  of  the  religious  evolution  of  man.  The  develop- 
ment of  religious  experience  in  a  race  requires  continuity, 
but  the  continuity  need  not  be  that  of  organic  growth. 


RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT   OF   MAN  231 

In  fact  we  have  already  argued  that  the  notion  of  organic 
development,  in  the  strict  meaning  of  the  term,  is  not 
applicable  to  spiritual  phenomena.  And  a  conception  of 
the  kind  cannot  be  applied  without  violence  to  religious 
history ;  for  while  a  particular  religion  preserves  a  tone 
and  character  of  its  own,  there  is  no  evidence  to  prove, 
and  various  reasons  to  disprove,  that  its  whole  subsequent 
history  is  foreshadowed  in  its  rudimentary  form.  What 
that  rudimentary  form  was  it  is  often  hard,  and  sometimes 
impossible,  to  define  clearly ;  and  the  religious  experience 
in  its  evolution  undergoes  modifications  through  the 
influence  of  other  phases  of  the  spiritual  life.  These 
modifications  affect  the  content  of  the  religion,  but  they 
cannot  be  regarded  as  involved  in  its  beginning.  It  is, 
for  instance,  the  mere  semblance  of  an  explanation  to  say, 
that  the  Universalism  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  the 
later  Jewish  Legalism  were  both  developed  from  germs  in 
primitive  Jahvism.  And  it  would  be  wasted  ingenuity  to 
try  to  show  that  the  conception  of  the  Catholic  Church  in 
the  age  of  Hildebrand  was  a  seed  of  promise  contained  in 
the  gospel  of  Jesus ! 

The  evolution  of  religion  involves  the  operation  of  two 
factors,  the  collective  and  the  individual ;  and  the  process 
is  not  intelligible  unless  we  keep  both  in  view.  The 
collective  factor  is  essential  to  the  understanding  of  that 
continuity  which  exists  between  the  different  stages  of  a 
religion.  It  embraces  all  that  we  associate  with  the 
institutional  side  of  religion — all  that  finds  embodiment  in 
rites  and  customs,  cult-forms  and  doctrines.  These  change, 
yet  only  slowly,  and  they  lend  that  common  character  to 
a  religion  which  is  discernible  at  very  different  periods  of 
its  history.  Overwhelmingly  strong  in  the  lower  levels  of 
culture,  the  collective  factor  is  afterwards  affected  to  a 
greater  degree  by  the  growing  power  of  personal  spirits ; 
but  it  is  a  vigorous  factor  to  the  last.  Against  radical 
reforms  and  revolutionary  changes  in  the  structure  of 
religion,  the  collective  or  institutional  factor  can  usually 
assert  itself  and  prevent  any  violent  break  with  the  past. 


232  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

This  is  intelligible  when  we  remember  how  powerfully 
individuals  are  influenced  by  their  religious  environment. 
The  influence  of  the  environment  they  cannot  escape, 
however  strongly  they  may  react  on  it.  Luther  in  revolt 
from  the  Komish  Church  was  still  under  the  spell  of  the 
system  against  which  he  protested.1  Again,  however 
subversive  of  religious  tradition  may  be  the  attitude  of  the 
reformer,  he  cannot  initiate  a  movement  which  will  grow 
and  prosper  unless  he  can  enlist  the  interest  and  sympathy 
of  the  masses  of  men  for  his  cause.  Though  he  is  a  free 
critic  of  tradition  they  are  not,  and  you  cannot  sway  men 
save  by  ideas  which  appeal  to  them.  The  dependence  of 
the  individual  on  the  support  of  the  slowly  moving  many, 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  when  he  throws  out  entirely 
novel  and  revolutionary  ideas  on  religion,  they  seldom  win 
their  way.  The  religion  of  Positivism,  though  it  has  had 
able  expounders,  breaks  too  violently  with  the  past. 
Consequently  it  has  not  that  root  in  the  traditional 
feelings  of  society  which  would  enable  it  to  become  a 
vital  and  expanding  faith.  So  the  collective  factor,  by  its 
stability,  secures  that  change  proceeds  within  limits  which 
ensure  the  identity  of  religion  and  the  continuity  of  its 
past  and  present  forms.  Moreover,  seeing  that  religion  is 
thoughout  a  social  phenomenon,  we  can  understand  that 
the  institutional  factor  should  wield  an  influence  persistent 
and  pervasive.  Hence,  as  has  been  said,  although  in- 
dividuals powerfully  assert  their  influence  on  religion,  the 
tendencies  to  homogeneity  and  stability  are  still  more 
powerful.  These  tendencies  are  always  quickened  in 
presence  of  rash  innovation  and  radical  criticism.2 

Nevertheless  the  individual  comes  to  play  a  very  im- 
portant part  in  the  evolution  of  religion.  In  the  religion  of 
primitive  groups  and  tribes  his  work  in  bringing  about 
changes  is  lost  to  sight,  and  the  collective  or  social  influ- 

1  An  apt  illustration  of  this  is  the  Lutheran  doctrine  of  consubstan- 
tiatioii. 

2  The  saying  of  Plutarch  reveals  the  universal  spirit  of  religious  con- 
servatism :  apicei  y&p  i]  Trdrpios  /cat  TraXcuA 


RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT   OF   MAN  233 

ence  is  dominant.  Change  proceeds  slowly  and  without 
observation,  and  the  voice  of  the  innovator  and  reformer 
is  not  heard.  But  with  the  growth  of  nations  and  civilised 
life  there  ensues  a  development  of  personal  consciousness 
which  has  far-reaching  results.  The  prophet  and  religious 
teacher  begin  to  take  a  place  in  the  spiritual  drama,  and 
the  sway  of  unreasoned  custom  is  broken.  When  the 
spirit  of  religion  is  reflected  inward,  personal  experience 
and  conviction  begin  to  count  in  the  making  of  piety,  and 
the  way  is  open.ed  out  for  a  fresh  and  freer  movement 
within  the  religious  society.  Instead  of  remaining  content 
to  play  a  merely  passive  role,  the  individual  begins  to 
reflect  and  valuate,  and  in  consequence  to  select  and 
criticise.  Great  spiritual  movements  are  nearly  always 
due  to  the  vivid  experience  and  insight  of  men  of  religious 
genius,  who  discern  the  inner  need  of  the  age  and  people, 
and  point  the  way  to  its  fulfilment.  These  spiritually 
gifted  men  see  further  and  deeper  than  others,  and  they 
communicate  their  vision  to  their  fellows.  This  indi- 
vidual influence  is  most  conspicuous  in  prophetic  religions, 
and  in  the  great  universal  religions  which  issued  from 
the  life  and  teaching  of  personal  founders.  The  impres- 
sive figure  of  prophet  and  teacher,  often  magnified  in  the 
mist  of  legend  and  tradition,  betokens  a  historic  personality 
who  was  the  fountain  of  a  fresh  spiritual  impulse.  And 
though  the  prophet  belongs  to  his  own  environment  and 
would  be  unintelligible  in  another,  still  the  attempt  to 
explain  him  through  his  surroundings  does  not  succeed. 
At  those  critical  points  when,  under  the  inspiration  of 
genius,  religion  breaks  into  a  new  and  wonderful  life,  the 
link  with  the  past  seems  to  be  broken.  But  on  mature 
reflexion  we  recognise  there  is  no  absolute  break  with 
what  has  gone  before,  and  the  prophet  has  not  come  to 
destroy  but  to  fulfil.  This  will,  I  think,  be  clear  when  we 
remember  how  social  conditions  minister  to  the  opportunity 
of  spiritually  gifted  individuals.  The  inspired  person 
must  appeal  to  his  age  and  respond  to  its  need:  the 
stimulus  to  his  activity  proceeds  from  the  facts  which 


234  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

surround  him  and  the  ideas  they  suggest.  He  does  not 
create  the  spiritual  crisis,  though  he  precipitates  it  and 
guides  it  to  an  issue.  The  personal  life  grows  out  of 
and  draws  its  nourishment  from  the  wider  life  of  society, 
and  the  most  original  genius  reflects  the  characteristics  of 
his  age  and  race.  Even  the  religions  which  spring  most 
directly  from  personal  inspiration  and  initiative,  must  be 
the  development  of  possibilities  contained  in  the  religious 
situation  as  a  whole.  This  dependence  of  the  individual 
is  the  guarantee  that  continuity  will  not  fail ;  while  the 
capacity  of  a  race  or  nation  to  bring  forth  men  of  spiritual 
light  and  leading,  gives  the  hope  of  religious  progress. 

Let  us  now  consider  brieily  those  general  causes  which 
stimulate  the  development  of  religion.  They  can,  I  think, 
be  reduced  to  three :  social  changes  and  social  intercourse, 
the  growth  of  the  ethical  consciousness,  and  the  increase  of 
scientific  knowledge. 

(1)  The  most  important  of  these  social  changes  has 
been  referred  to  in  a  previous  chapter :  it  was  the  blending 
of  tribes  to  form  the  nation.  A  deep  and  far-reaching 
transformation  of  this  kind,  bringing  together  as  it  did 
various  deities  and  cults,  was  of  the  greatest  consequence 
in  the  evolution  of  religion,  and  practically  entailed  the 
reorganisation  of  religious  ideas.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
repeat  what  has  already  been  said  in  this  connexion  :  the 
point  to  be  noted  is,  that  this  great  forward  movement  in 
religion  was  conditioned  and  prepared  for  by  a  marked 
advance  in  culture  which  made  an  advance  in  religion 
necessary,  and  indeed  inevitable.  The  stimulus  did  not 
proceed  in  the  first  instance  from  the  religious  conscious- 
ness. The  rise  of  a  new  and  complex  social  system  created 
a  need  which  the  older  religious  conceptions  could  not 
satisfy,  and  the  pressure  of  this  felt  want  brought  about  a 
highly  significant  development  of  religion.  Moreover,  the 
organisation  of  civilised  society  gave  the  lead  to  the 
religious  imagination,  and  it  was  reflected  in  the  system 
of  departmental  deities,  graduated  in  the  order  of  their 
importance  after  the  similitude  of  the  earthly  state.  "  The 


RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT    OF   MAN  235 

rule  of  many  is  not  good  " :  this  was  man's  experience  on 
earth,  and  in  accordance  with  it  he  fashioned  the  order  of 
things  in  heaven  and  placed  a  supreme  deity  at  the  head 
of  his  pantheon.  National  religion  was  formed  on  a  basis 
of  tribal  cults,  while  the  growth  of  the  national  conscious- 
ness and  experience  was  the  organising  spirit  of  the  larger 
religious  system.  But  the  interaction  of  tribal  cults  con- 
ditioned the  rise  of  the  national  form  of  religion,  and 
interaction  of  religious  worships  is  always  an  incentive  to 
spiritual  progress.  The  intercommunication  of  nations  and 
races,  especially  when  their  religious  systems  were  in  the 
formative  stage,  produced  a  ferment  of  religious  ideas 
which  brought  about  changes  and  fresh  combinations. 
Gods  were  borrowed,  a  native  deity  took  on  the  attributes 
of  a  foreign  counterpart,  and  cultus-forms  passed  from  one 
land  to  another.  No  doubt  this  interaction  did  not  always 
signify  progress  in  religion,  and  sometimes  it  hastened 
decadence.  But  it  meant  a  quickened  religious  interest 
and  activity  which,  under  favouring  conditions,  led  to 
development.  That  such  a  contact  and  blending  of 
religious  systems  did  take  place  there  is  evidence  to  show. 
The  archaeological  investigations  of  the  last  thirty  years 
have  disclosed  a  further  vista  of  civilisation  in  East 
Mediterranean  lands  of  which  the  former  generation  knew 
nothing.  These  discoveries  point  to  an  intercommunication 
of  races  which  was  formerly  unsuspected,  and  suggest  lines 
of  influence  between  Egypt,  Babylon,  Assyria,  Palestine, 
Asia  Minor,  and  Greece.  And  though  we  cannot,  and 
perhaps  never  will,  define  these  mutual  influences  very 
fully  and  clearly,  we  know  enough  to  infer  with  some 
degree  of  certainty  that  the  religious  systems  of  these 
races  were  not  isolated  growths,  but  gained  by  contact 
and  mutual  influence.  Isolation,  racial  and  individual,  is 
hostile  to  development ;  and  a  people  which  is  shut  out 
by  natural  barriers  from  intercourse  with  other  races  is 
hindered  from  making  religious  progress. 

(2)  The  growth  of  the  ethical  consciousness  powerfully 
affects  religion,     The  ethical  spirit,  being  less  controlled 


236  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

by  the  influence  of  tradition,  frequently  moves  in  advance 
of  current  religious  belief  and  practice ;  and  when  this 
happens  it  reacts  strongly  on  religion,  and  by  its  criticism 
stimulates  religious  progress.  In  the  higher  national 
religions  the  deepened  and  enlarged  personal  consciousness 
was  accompanied  by  a  growth  in  ethical  feeling,  which 
helped  to  transform  the  religious  relation  and  to  give  it 
a  moral  in  place  of  a  naturalistic  meaning.  In  the  process 
of  refining  the  religious  relation  the  object  of  that  relation 
was  also  purified.  The  deities  of  national  polytheism 
retained  traits  of  their  natural  origin,  and  reflected  the 
ruder  ideas  of  the  early  social  groups  which  worshipped 
them.  But  under  pressure  of  the  moral  consciousness  a 
silent  process  of  transformation  ensued,  and  the  effect  was 
to  throw  the  older  features  into  the  background  and  to 
accentuate  the  moral  characteristics.  In  this  way  man 
has  made  the  objects  of  his  religious  reverence  reflect  his 
own  quickened  sense  of  ethical  values.  It  sometimes 
happens,  however,  that  religion  in  its  institutional  forms 
does  not  readily  prove  tractable  to  the  ethical  influence ; 
and  the  consequence  may  be  a  serious  contradiction  between 
the  moral  consciousness  and  religious  ideas  and  habits.  In 
this  case  instead  of  peaceful  transformation  there  is  a 
conflict  issuing  in  the  reform  of  religion.  Crises  of  this 
kind  engender  strong  feelings :  they  furnish  the  occasion 
for  the  activity  of  great  personalities,  and  apart  from  them 
the  reforming  movement  cannot  be  successfully  carried 
out.  For  illustration  we  can  point  to  the  prophetic  move- 
ment in  Israel  in  the  eighth  century  B.C.  and  to  the 
Protestant  Keformation.  In  cases  like  these  the  intense 
ethical  spirit,  becoming  incarnate  in  heroic  figures,  breaks 
down  opposition  and  leads  religion  onward  in  the  path  of 
progress.  Here  again  religion  follows  rather  than  leads 
the  movement  of  culture. 

(3)  The  third  factor  which  promotes  religious  develop- 
ment is  the  increase  of  scientific  knowledge.  I  use  the 
term  scientific  in  a  wide  sense,  and  do  not  limit  it  to  the 
knowledge  yielded  by  the  natural  sciences.  The  growth 


RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT   OF   MAN  237 

of  knowledge  makes  its  influence  felt  in  promoting  religious 
progress    more   conspicuously   in    the    later    than    in    the 
earlier   stages   of  religion.     A  scientific   insight   into    the 
working  of  nature  and  the  course  of  history,  or  speculation 
on  the  ultimate  meaning  of  life,  is  only  possible  after  man 
has  made  the  toilsome  journey  from  barbarism  to  civilisa- 
tion ;  and  religion  had  already  run  a  long  course  before 
the  dawn  of  civilisation.     So  when  men  began  to  know 
and   understand   things   through   the    exercise    of    reason, 
they  were  already  confronted  with  conceptions  of  the  world 
and  human   life  which   were  the  immemorial  heritage  of 
religion.     These  conceptions  had  been  fashioned  by  naive 
and  imaginative   thinking  prompted  and  led  by  religious 
motives  and  interests,   and   when    the  light    of    scientific 
reflexion  was  turned  upon  them  they  disclosed  defects  and 
contradictions.     Thought,  which  had   purified  itself  from 
the  grosser  taints  of  sense,  judged  them  anthropomorphic 
and  incoherent.     In  these  circumstances  the  reflective  spirit 
may  strive  to  bring  religious  ideas  into  harmony  with  its 
own  movement,  or  it  may  content  itself  with  criticising 
them  from  a  detached  standpoint.     What  it  cannot  do  is 
to  remain  entirely  aloof  and  indifferent.     An  outstanding 
instance  of  speculative  thought  working  within  a  historic 
religion  is  seen  in  India,  where  a  polytheistic  system  which 
had  its  roots  in  nature-worship  was  gradually  transmuted 
into    a    subtle    and    far-reaching   pantheism.      In  Greece, 
reflective  thought   took  up  a   more   negative  attitude    to 
the  national  polytheism,  and  did  not  seriously  attempt  to 
transform  it.     Yet    in    the   philosophical   religion   of   the 
Greek  thinkers  we  also  see  a  tendency  to  dissolve  poly- 
theism in  a  pantheistic  unity.     In  such  ways  expanding 
knowledge,  by  throwing  into  strong  relief  the  discrepancy 
between  the  ancient  forms  of  religion  and  the  new  mental 
outlook,  brings  about  change  and  advance.     The  demand  for 
a  coherent  world-view  in  the  end  overcomes  the  reverence 
for  ancient  forms. 

While  growth  of  knowledge  is  not  without  effect  on 
religious  feeling  and  worship,  its  influence,  as  one  would 


238  RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT 

expect,  is  much  greater  on  religious  doctrines,  which 
represent  the  cognitive  side  of  religion.  For  developed 
religion  has  to  define  itself  in  doctrines,  and  so  broadens 
into  a  world-view  that  brings  it  into  contact  with  scientific 
knowledge.  Where  a  religion  is  alive  and  vigorous,  inter- 
action must  follow,  and  in  modern  times  we  are  witnessing 
a  silent  process  by  which  old  doctrines  of  the  faith  are 
revised  and  modified,  in  some  instances  discarded  and  in 
others  transformed.  This  process  is  due  to  the  changed 
intellectual  environment  in  which  the  ancient  religion  is 
placed,  and  to  whose  pressure  it  responds.  No  doubt  it 
is  true  that  rationality  is  not  a  final  test  of  a  religion. 
For  religion  is  more  than  reason,  and  yet  it  ought  not  to 
contradict  reason  :  hence  the  obligation  laid  on  man  to 
bring  his  religious  ideas  into  concord  with  his  scientific 
knowledge.  Accordingly  any  significant  increase  of  know- 
ledge will  be  a  stimulus  to  the  religious  mind  to  adjust 
itself  to  the  needs  of  the  wider  outlook.  This  is  illustrated 
by  the  influence  on  religious  ideas  exercised  in  recent  times 
by  the  new  knowledge  which  has  been  the  fruit  of  the 
recognition  and  application  of  the  principle  of  evolution. 

The  religious  consciousness,  we  have  shown,  involves 
the  activity  of  the  three  psychical  factors,  thought,  feeling, 
and  will ;  and  all  are  involved  in  man's  religious  develop- 
ment. Yet  each  does  not  contribute  to  progress  in  the 
same  degree.  Thought,  with  its  restless  movement  and 
insatiable  curiosity,  contributes  most  to  religious  change 
and  advance.  Feeling  on  the  whole  is  much  more  con- 
servative, and  in  the  form  of  sentiment  closely  guards  the 
inheritance  of  the  past  and  strives  to  resist  the  process  of 
innovation.  The  phenomena  of  religious  survival  show 
how  sentiment  can  preserve  older  religious  rites  and  beliefs 
in  a  changed  intellectual  and  social  environment.  Still 
we  cannot  say  that  thought  is  always  on  the  side  of 
progress  and  feeling  always  against  it.  For  the  feelings 
which  have  become  intertwined  with  an  old  religion, 
rendered  intense  by  what  seems  a  wanton  assault,  can  win 
over  thought  to  their  service  and  employ  it  to  defend  the 


RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT   OF    MAN  239 

time-honoured  citadel  of  the  faith.  And  by  this  use  of 
reason  in  its  own  defence  religion  gives  testimony  of  its 
vitality.  A  decadent  religion  lacks  inner  resources  to 
resist  attack,  and  at  the  challenge  of  reason  it  can  offer 
no  apology  for  itself.  On  the  other  hand,  feeling,  if 
mainly  conservative,  is  not  always  so.  When  a  religion 
degenerates  into  corruptions  and  abuses,  feeling  is  alienated, 
and  may  pass  by  revulsion  into  strong  antagonism.  This 
is  notably  so  when  religion  is  at  open  discord  with  the 
moral  consciousness ;  then  the  feelings  rally  round  the 
moral  standard  and  give  strength  and  persistence  to  the 
demand  for  reform.  No  great  reforming  movement  in 
religion  will  prevail  unless  it  has  behind  it  the  powerful 
support  of  the  feelings. 

Man  seeks  through  religion  a  full  and  perfect  satis- 
faction of  his  spiritual  nature,  and  this  implies  the  harmony 
of  feeling,  thought,  and  will.  Each  element  does  not 
advance  pari  passu  with  the  others,  but  an  advance  in 
any  one  of  them  entails  in  the  long  run  an  advance  in 
the  others,  if  there  is  to  be  a  true  spiritual  gain.  The 
growth  of  the  intellectual  conception  of  God,  for  example, 
cannot  remain  a  purely  intellectual  satisfaction,  if  it  is 
to  promote  a  real  development  of  religion.  It  must 
influence  the  affective  and  the  practical  life,  tending  to 
spiritualise  feeling  and  to  foster  the  constant  ethical  will. 
The  secret  of  religious  development  in  an  individual  or 
a  race  lies  in  the  capacity  to  overcome  what  is  partial 
and  one-sided,  and  to  move  beyond  them  to  a  satisfaction 
of  the  whole  spiritual  nature.  It  is  easy  to  show  that, 
when  the  religious  spirit  fails  to  assert  the  claims  of 
the  whole  against  the  parts,  the  way  to  spiritual  progress 
is  barred.  For  example,  when  the  intellectual  interest 
becomes  dominant  and  exclusive,  religion  declines  to  a 
sober  and  uninspiring  rationalism  which  has  little  influence 
on  the  spiritual  life.  Thus  the  rational  religion  of  Deism 
and  the  Aufklarung  was  too  destitute  of  spiritual  energy 
to  minister  to  the  religious  well-being  and  progress  of 
mankind.  So  likewise  when  exclusive  stress  is  laid  on 


240  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

the  practical  side  of  religion,  on  the  mere  performance 
of  stated  acts,  such  as  we  see  in  certain  phases  of  Legal 
Religion,  the  result  is  a  mechanical  performance  from 
which  clear  faith  and  warm  feeling  have  vanished.  A 
like  ineffectiveness  and  deterioration  are  visible  when 
feeling  gains  an  undisputed  sway,  as  in  some  forms  of 
Mysticism.  Let  us  not,  however,  be  understood  to  mean, 
that  the  secret  of  religious  development  lies  in  striking 
a  balance,  in  wisely  adjusting  competing  claims  after 
the  spirit  of  the  old  Greek  maxim  prjSev  ayav.  If  this 
were  our  meaning  it  might  be  in  point  to  object :  Can 
our  religion  ever  be  too  practical  ?  can  we  ever  feel  too 
deeply  on  sacred  things  ?  This,  however,  is  little  better 
than  a  travesty  of  our  argument.  It  is  not  devotion 
to  one  aspect  of  religion,  but  indifference  to  the  other 
aspects  which  spells  defect.  Besides,  is  it  not  just  through 
the  experience  of  defect  that  we  are  impelled  to  seek 
something  better  ?  In  fact,  progress  is  realised  through 
partial  developments  which  fail  to  satisfy  because  they 
are  partial,  and  so  through  reaction  lead  to  a  reconciliation 
on  a  higher  level.  Man,  involved  in  the  time-process, 
and  knowing  only  in  part,  cannot  move  forward  on  an 
even  line  to  realise  that  ideal  harmony  in  which  each 
element  in  his  nature  comes  to  its  due.  He  seeks,  and 
in  some  measure  finds  ;  but  hard  experience  and  disappoint- 
ment compel  him  to  renew  the  quest.  Not  the  clear 
prevision  of  all  that  the  religious  ideal  means,  but  the 
consciousness  that  their  spiritual  nature  has  not  been 
satisfied,  has  led  mankind  forward  stage  by  stage  on  this 
spiritual  pilgrimage.  Each  generation  only  sees  far 
enough  to  take  the  next  steps  of  the  journey ;  and  only 
when  we  look  backward  and  trace  the  long  and  devious 
course,  can  we  say  that  in  religion  something  has  been 
won,  and  man  has  not  simply  returned  on  his  footsteps. 
We  feel  intuitively  certain  that  ethical  and  spiritual 
religion  is  a  purer  and  deeper  fulfilment  of  man's  nature 
than  savage  spiritism.  Monotheism,  we  are  equally  sure, 
gives  a  security  and  peace  of  soul  to  which  the  polytheist, 


MAIN   FEATURES    AND    RESULTS  241 

with  his  divided  allegiance,  is  a  stranger.  Hence  we 
do  not  doubt  that  value  has  been  gained  and  development 
has  been  real.  Behind  this  development  and  revealed 
in  it  is  the  nature  of  man,  and  it  has  -determined  the 
direction  in  which  the  ideal  lies.  The  actual  attainment 
is  the  measure  of  man's  free  devotion  to  the  ideal. 


G. — MAIN  FEATURES  AND  EESULTS. 

Let  us  now  try  to  draw  some  general  conclusions.  In 
doing  this  care  is  needed,  for  in  a  subject  like  the  present 
it  is  easy  to  make  generalisations  which  are  only 
partially  true.  At  the  outset  we  are  confronted  with 
the  fact  that  only  a  part  of  man's  religious  evolution 
is  open  to  our  view.  For  at  least  tens  of  thousands  of 
years,  man,  as  distinguished  from  the  animal,  has  inhabited 
the  earth ;  but  there  remains  no  positive  evidence  of 
the  religion  of  those  long  vanished  races  whose  existence 
we  infer  from  the  rude  flint  implements,  such  as  have 
been  found  in  the  river  gravels  of  France  and  Belgium.1 
And  if  the  beginnings  of  religion  are  veiled  in  obscurity, 
its  future  is  likewise  hidden  from  our  view.  For  we  can 
hardly  suppose  that  religion  has  now  reached  the  final 
stage  of  its  evolution,  and  that,  while  culture  continues 
to  develop,  religion  will  remain  stationary.  Indeed  there 
cannot  be  a  doubt  that  religion  will  undergo  changes 
in  the  years  to  come;  but  what  exactly  these  will  be, 
and  how  the  great  religious  systems  will  affect  one 
another,  we  do  not  clearly  know.  Even  though  we  hold 
that  the  supreme  principle  of  religion  has  been  realised, 
yet  so  long  as  that  principle  has  not  worked  itself  fully 

1  There  is  still  a  very  serious  division  of  opinion  among  geologists 
and  anthropologists  in  regard  to  the  period  during  which  homo  sapiens  has 
inhabited  the  earth.  Some  boldly  affirm  that  it.  extends  through  many 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  years,  while  others,  more  cautious,  only  suggest 
tens  of  thousands.  We  are  sceptical  when  invited  to  believe  the  owner 
of  the  jawbone,  found  recently  in  the  Mauer  sands  near  Heidelberg,  lived 
half  a  million  years  ago.  It  is  to  be  hoped  the  investigations  of  the  future 
will  shed  light  on  this  problem. 
16 


242  RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT 

out,  we  cannot  say  that  the  process  in  its  whole  signifi- 
cance is  before  us.  For  beings  whose  lot  falls  within  a 
process  which  they  can  only  survey  in  part,  a  perfect 
insight  into  the  meaning  of  the  whole  appears  to  be  an 
unattainable  ideal. 

Meanwhile  it  is  possible  to  set  forth  the  main  features 
of  the  evolution  of  religion  as  it  presents  itself  to  us, 
along  with  the  conclusions  which  it  suggests.  On  a 
large  view  religion  passes  through  three  great  stages. 
The  first  and  earliest  known  to  us  is  Spiritism,  the 
primitive  form  of  belief  out  of  which  all  higher  religion 
has  grown.  Then  follows  Polytheism,  the  religion  of  the 
nation  in  contrast  to  the  tribe :  a  stage  of  religion  which 
was  reached  on  the  formation  of  the  larger  national  States 
some  time  before  the  clear  light  of  history.  Finally 
comes  Monotheism,  a  spiritual  faith  which  goes  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  nation,  and,  in  its  Christian  form,  out 
of  the  dissolution  of  the  national  States  of  the  old  world 
has  become  a  Universal  Eeligion.  The  movement  in  its 
broad  features  is  from  the  natural  to  the  spiritual,  from 
outward  to  inward ;  this  is  reflected  in  the  gradual 
transformation  of  the  idea  of  the  divine  Object  and  the 
character  of  worship.  In  Spiritism  the  gods,  though 
behind  the  objects  of  sense,  fall  within  the  natural  system 
of  things;  in  Polytheism  they  are  exalted  above  the 
immediate  environment,  and  overrule  the  course  of  nature ; 
in  Monotheism,  God  transcends  the  material  universe, 
while  sustaining  it  and  working  through  it.  Again,  in 
tribal  religion  the  relation  of  man  to  his  gods  is  merely 
natural :  national  religion  purifies  the  religious  bond  of 
its  materialism,  and  begins  to  infuse  into  it  an  ethical 
meaning :  in  universal  religion  this  process  is  completed, 
and  results  in  a  truly  moral  and  spiritual  relationship. 
Lastly,  in  worship,  .Spiritism  is  quite  external  and  sensuous. 
It  is  the  acts  which  count,  the  state  of  the  worshipper's 
mind  is  indifferent.  And  the  goods  which  are  sought 
in  worship  are  material,  for  man  looks  no  higher  than 
his  material  wants.  National  religion,  in  its  nobler  forms 


MAIN   FEATURES   AND   RESULTS  243 

at  least,  helped  to  lift  worship  above  this  crude  materialism 
of  motive,  and  to  invest  it  with  something  of  an  ethical 
and  patriotic  significance.  Monotheism  transforms  worship 
into  a  spiritual  communion  of  man  and  God,  which  is 
expressed  in  the  outer  world  by  the  life  of  ethical  service. 
These  three  stages  of  religion  mark  an  ascending  scale 
of  life,  and  therefore  of  human  needs  and  of  the  objects 
which  satisfy  these  needs.  A  gradual  purification  and 
refinement  of  religious  values  are  visible.  The  development 
is  from  the  sensuous  to  the  spiritual,  from  the  desire 
of  outward  things  to  the  consciousness  that  the  highest 
goods  are  the  goods  of  the  soul.  Hence,  underlying  the 
evolution  of  religion  and  working  through  it,  is  the 
growth  of  self-consciousness,  the  personal  development 
of  man.  Men  are  known  by  the  gods  they  reverence. 
For  man's  spiritual  conception  of  God  and  the  religious 
relation  is  inseparably  bound  up  with  his  spiritual  con- 
ception of  himself.  The  values  of  the  things  in  heaven 
reflect  the  ideals  which  prevail  on  earth,  and  there  is 
a  sense  in  which  it  is  profoundly  true : — 

"Dass  jeglicher  das  Beste  was  er  kennt, 
Er  Gott  ja  seinen  Gott  benennt." 

Eeligious  development  is  at  root  an  aspect  of  self- 
development,  and  it  is  a  process  in  which  external  stimuli 
are  gradually  replaced  by  spiritual  motives.  Hence  savage 
religion  is  spasmodic  and  intermittent,  while  spiritual 
religion  is  constant  and  pervasive  of  the  life.  In  early 
culture  social  changes  and  the  transition  to  fresh  conditions 
of  existence  do  most  to  bring  about  a  growth  of  religious 
ideas.  Beliefs  seem  rather  impressed  on  the  mind  from 
the  side  of  the  environment  than  freely  developed  from 
within.  But  when  man,  by  the  resources  of  civilisation, 
has  emancipated  himself  from  the  tyranny  of  material 
nature,  and  gained  a  deeper  consciousness  of  himself  and 
his  powers,  the  growing  needs  of  his  inner  life  prevail 
and  urge  him  on  the  path  of  religious  progress.  He 
now  develops  his  religion,  not  through  stress  of  circum- 


244  RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT 

stances,  but  because  he  is  convinced  that  development 
leads  to  a  fuller  and  deeper  satisfaction  of  the  spirit. 

Though  the  general  tendencies  revealed  in  the  history 
of  religion  are  as  we  have  described  them,  the  actual 
movement  is  not  simple,  and  the  study  of  details  suggests 
qualifications.  We  never  find  a  steady  and  consistent 
growth  in  the  direction  indicated.  Periods  of  great 
activity  and  rapid  expansion  in  the  history  of  religion  are 
followed  by  times  of  reaction,  when  what  was  gained  seems 
lost.  Keligions  once  powerful  appear  to  lose  their  energy, 
and  when  the  culture-systems  out  of  which  they  grew 
disintegrate,  they  pass  away  with  them.  At  the  best  their 
contribution  to  the  larger  development  of  religion  is 
indirect,  nor  is  it  easy  to  appreciate  it.  Again,  a  religion 
after  it  has  passed  its  classical  period,  so  to  speak, 
sometimes  fails  in  vitality :  it  becomes  stereotyped  and 
mechanised,  and  does  not  progress.  This,  for  instance,  is 
true  of  the  later  Jewish  religion.  Again  the  story  of 
Buddhism  in  the  Christian  era  is  a  record  how  an  ethical 
and  universal  religion  has  become  entangled  with  and 
overgrown  by  alien  elements,  which  have  stifled  its  develop- 
ment. No  religion  appears  to  be  exempt  from  periods  of 
reaction  and  decline.  But  a  religion  which  is  endowed 
with  vigorous  life  silently  gathers  its  resources  during  the 
season  of  decay,  and  by  and  by  it  brings  its  winter  to  a 
close  and  renews  its  powers  in  a  spiritual  springtime. 
The  great  and  conspicuous  illustration  of  this  is 
Christianity,  which  triumphed  over  the  decadence  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  is  still  a  quick  and  growing  faith. 

A  further  qualification  must  be  made  when  we  speak 
of  religious  development.  In  a  complete  development  the 
lower  elements  are  taken  up  and  transformed  in  the  life 
of  the  higher  stage,  or,  if  they  resist  the  transforming 
movement,  they  are  discarded.  In  the  evolution  of 
religion  this  process  is  carried  out  very  imperfectly :  we 
constantly  observe  the  lower  persisting  alongside  the 
higher,  where  they  are  not  really  consistent  with  one 
another.  The  principle  of  survival  in  religion  has  already 


MAIN   FEATURES   AND    RESULTS  245 

been  discussed,  and  it  is  not  necessary  to  enlarge  upon  it 
again.  It  may  suffice  to  say  that  in  any  religion,  whether 
of  the  past  or  present,  the  existence  of  these  heterogeneous 
elements  can  easily  be  verified.  In  a  rough  way  they 
correspond  to  grades  of  culture  and  spirituality  within  the 
social  system.  If  one  were  to  take  the  whole  mass  of 
beliefs  and  practices  which  are  at  present  associated  with 
any  of  the  great  religions  of  the  world,  it  would  be  quite 
impossible  to  form  them  into  a  coherent  whole.  So  long 
as  this  is  so,  development  is  imperfect.  Probably  the 
increase  of  culture  and  the  wider  diffusion  of  knowledge 
will  make  it  more  and  more  difficult  for  the  cruder 
beliefs  and  superstitions  to  linger  on  in  civilised  lands  ; 
and  if  so,  the  elimination  of  these  lower  elements  will 
remove  a  hindrance  to  coherency  in  the  historic  religions. 
But  the  process  is  not  easy  of  accomplishment,  and  its 
consummation  is  still  distant.  Meanwhile  the  facts 
constrain  us  to  admit  that,  in  the  history  of  religion,  the 
principle  of  development  in  its  full  meaning  is  only 
partially  realised. 

The  ordinary  ideas  about  man's  religious  development 
have  taken  shape  rather  under  the  influence  of  faith  in  the 
future  than  from  a  study  of  the  past.  Those  who,  for  one 
reason  or  another,  believe  that  mankind  is  moving  forward 
to  one  universal  and  spiritual  religion,  will  naturally  see 
the  past  in  an  optimistic  light,  and  find  in  it  the  tokens  of 
preparation  and  progress.  It  is  certainly  an  uplifting  hope, 
that  the  endless  differences  of  creed,  ritual,  and  service  will 
finally  be  merged  in  a  perfect  and  final  religion.  Expect- 
ing the  land  of  promise,  the  wayfarer  forgets  the  painful 
wanderings  in  the  wilderness.  The  religious  philosopher, 
however,  will  not  espouse  this  faith  without  examination  ; 
he  will  call  for  historical  evidences  and  consider  psycho- 
logical possibilities.  The  theologian  may  appeal  to 
authority,  but  the  philosopher  is  compelled  to  ask  for 
reasons. 

If  we  look  to  the  past,  then,  we  find,  as  we  have  said, 
a  movement  of  advance  from  Spiritism  to  Monotheism 


246  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

which  has  been  at  least  partially  realised.  Interruptions 
there  have  been  and  fallings  away,  but  progress  has 
prevailed,  and  beyond  a  doubt  the  highest  religion  of  to-day 
is  incomparably  better  than  the  crude  beliefs  of  savage  man. 
If  we  judge  by  developmental  capacity  and  adaptability  to 
the  various  needs  of  mankind,  the  type  of  spiritual  mono- 
theism represented  by  Christianity  seems  best  fitted  for 
the  universal  religion.  Yet  the  idea  that  the  human  race 
is  moving  to  the  acceptance  of  a  single  religious  creed 
is  beset  with  difficulties,  and  these  deserve  consideration. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  plain  that  a  highly  developed  and 
spiritual  religion  can  only  appeal  in  a  limited  degree  to 
savage  tribes  in  the  lower  culture.  You  cannot  bodily 
transplant  religious  ideas,  which  have  gradually  evolved 
within  an  organised  system  of  culture,  into  the  minds  of 
savage  tribes  who  are  ignorant  of  even  the  elements  of 
civilisation.  Still,  in  so  far  as  these  lower  races  show 
tokens  of  being  able  to  absorb  the  elements  of  civilised  life, 
it  is  possible  that  they  may  learn  to  assimilate  a  spiritual 
and  universal  religion.  But  the  fact  cannot  be  blinked,  that 
some  of  these  primitive  peoples  seem  to  wither  away  before 
the  breath  of  civilisation.  The  story  of  those  lower  races 
whom  the  '  progress  of  civilisation  '  has  destroyed,  or  is  fast 
destroying,  is  a  painful  commentary  on  modern  humani- 
tarianism.  Moreover,  though  we  leave  savage  races  out  of 
account,  it  may  be  argued  that  the  civilised  peoples  of  the 
East  and  West  stand  spiritually  apart,  and  the  one  shows 
no  hospitality  for  the  religious  ideas  of  the  other.  The 
progress,  for  instance,  of  Christianity  in  India  and  China 
has  been  relatively  small,  and  we  cannot  predict  from  what 
has  been  achieved  in  the  past  its  triumph  in  any  measurable 
period  of  time.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  not  base 
sweeping  conclusions  on  the  missionary  efforts  of  a  few 
generations  carried  on  at  scattered  points.  And  within 
recent  years  there  has  been  a  remarkable  awakening  of 
Eastern  nations  to  Western  ideas  which  is  of  fateful 
significance :  this  may  be  the  herald  of  a  new  receptiveness 
to  the  great  spiritual  religion  of  the  European  peoples. 


MAIN   FEATURES   AND    RESULTS  247 

There  is,  indeed,  no  sure  proof  that  this  will  be  so,  but  there 
are  at  least  hopeful  tokens. 

There  is  another  difficulty  which  cannot  be  lightly 
passed  over.  While  a  process  of  integration  has  been 
taking  place  by  which  lesser  religious  systems  have  been 
merged  in  great  and  widespread  faiths,  there  has  also  been 
a  process  of  differentiation.  Modern  Christianity,  with  its 
multiplicity  of  churches  and  creeds,  is  an  illustration. 
And  no  one  who  frankly  regards  the  facts  will  deny,  that 
among  peoples  accounted  Christian  there  exist  very  great 
diversities  of  religious  belief  and  life.  Even  the  Koman 
Catholic  Church  is  a  unity  of  organisation  rather  than  of 
belief.  This  wide  range  of  differences  is  not  concealed  by 
a  common  name :  it  contrasts  with  the  greater  unity  of 
primitive  faith,  and  does  not  seem  to  grow  less  with  the 
lapse  of  time.  This,  it  is  urged,  is  fatal  to  the  hope  of  a 
universal  religion.1  I  think  we  must  admit  that,  human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  we  can  hardly  look  for  a  time 
when  all  men  will  be  perfectly  one  in  religious  belief  and 
practice.  Differences  in  character  and  culture  are 
reflected  in  religion,  and  no  race  takes  over  a  religion 
without  modifying  it  in  the  process.  Moreover,  there  is 
something  inward  and  personal  in  the  higher  form  of 
religious  faith  which  is  hostile  to  uniformity.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  undoubtedly  a  unity  in  human  nature, 
and  this  underlies  all  the  various  manifestations  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  The  same  needs,  hopes,  and  fears 
continually  recur,  and  find  like  forms  of  expression. 
Does  not  this  unity  of  desire  point  to  a  unity  of  fulfilment  ? 
a  unity  of  the  spirit  if  not  of  the  letter  ?  As  modern 
civilisation  brings  the  diverse  culture-systems  of  the  world 
into  closer  contact  and  interaction,  it  is  not  fanciful 
to  expect  that  they  will  converge  and  meet  within  the 
one  great  spiritual  and  Universal  Eeligion.  Stereotyped 

1  Vid.  Wundt,  VMkerpsychologie,  vol.  ii.  pt.  3,  pp.  755-765.  After 
reviewing  the  facts  and  emphasising  the  divergences  of  belief  covered  by 
the  name  Christian,  Wundt  gives  a  negative  answer  to  the  question  under 
discussion. 


248  RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT 

identity  is  indeed  impossible,  and  differences  will  remain  to 
express  the  differences  of  human  minds ;  but  there  may  be 
a  spiritual  unity  of  faith  and  life  which  transcends  the 
differences. 

All  who  study  the  history  of  religion  will  not  acquiesce 
in  this  view.  We  admit  it  is  not  a  view  which  is  forced 
upon  us  by  an  examination  of  the  facts,  though  it  is 
not  inconsistent  with  them.  But  it  is  only  on  some 
such  postulate  that  we  can  fully  justify  the  teleological 
conception  of  man's  religious  development.1  A  true  devel- 
opment is  a  process  in  which  value  is  conserved  and 
increased,  and  the  end  is  better  than  the  beginning.  It 
means  that  the  religious  consciousness  rises  to  richer 
and  deeper  forms  of  spiritual  self-fulfilment,  while  the 
gains  of  the  past  are  maintained  in  the  present ;  lower 
and  more  material  forms  of  religion  die  out,  or  are 
purified  and  transformed ;  and  this  age-long  movement, 
as  it  works  itself  out  in  the  scattered  races  of  the  world, 
is  converging  towards  a  common  goal.  But  to  give 
convincing  evidence  of  this  from  the  phenomenology  of 
religion  is  not  possible.  If,  for  instance,  it  were  argued 
that  the  tendency  to  integration,  which  we  see  in  the 
history  of  religion,  will  in  the  long  run  be  overcome 
by  a  process  of  differentiation,  and  in  consequence  of 
this  latter  process  religion  will  become  more  and  more 
a  matter  of  subjective  conviction,  endlessly  diversified 
in  character  and  precluding  unity  of  faith  and  community 
of  service,  our  only  sufficient  ground  for  rejecting  such 
an  inference  would  be  certain  postulates.  In  this  way 
postulates  become  the  arbiters  of  ultimate  issues.  A 
recent  writer,  after  discussing  at  some  length  the  problems 
connected  with  the  development  of  religion,  comes  to  the 
conclusion  that,  by  an  inner  dialectic,  the  religious  spirit 

1  H.  Siebeck  has  pointed  out,  that  the  actuality  and  continuity  of 
progress  are  less  matters  of  knowledge  than  of  faith.  Vid.  Zur  Religions- 
philosophic,  1907,  p.  9.  And  if  one  were  to  suppose  the  destiny  of  religion 
was  to  break  up  into  a  countless  diversity  of  beliefs  without  any  real  unity, 
he  would  be  slow  to  discern  signs  of  progress  in  the  past. 


MAIN   FEATURES    AND   RESULTS  249 

moves  forward  to  its  goal,  the  religion  of  divine  humanity. 
However  we  may  sympathise  with  this  religious  ideal, 
we  do  not  think  the  author  shows  in  any  convincing 
way  that  the  historic  evidence  bears  out  this  conclusion. 
The  conclusion  is  really  the  outcome  of  certain  meta- 
physical presuppositions  which  he  brings  to  bear  on  his 
historical  discussion.1  That  the  historic  study  of  develop- 
ment should  lead  up  to  a  speculative  theory  of  its  nature, 
we  are  not  in  the  least  disposed  to  deny.  But  it  is 
important  to  take  care  that  we  do  not  put  forward 
metaphysical  principles  in  the  guise  of  historical  facts. 
To  our  mind  it  is  better  to  study  the  phenomenology 
of  the  religious  consciousness  apart  from  a  metaphysical 
theory  of  its  nature,  and  then  simply  point  out  that  to 
justify  and  complete  the  notion  of  religious  development 
certain  postulates  are  called  for.  The  justification  of 
such  postulates  will  be,  that  by  means  of  them  we  give 
completeness  to  our  conception  of  religious  development, 
and  impart  to  it  a  satisfying  meaning. 

First  of  all  there  is  the  postulate  that  the  supreme 
Value  is  spiritual,  and  that  the  spiritual  always  takes 
precedence  of  the  sensuous  in  the  order  of  worth.  From 
this  it  follows  that  the  completion  and  full  realisation 
of  his  spiritual  nature  will  be  the  religious  ideal  of  man. 
If  any  one  is  concerned  to  dispute  this,  we  could  not 
refute  him  by  a  rational  proof.  The  judgment  of  value 
which  asserts  the  precedence  of  the  spiritual  to  the  natural 
has  to  be  taken  as  immediate  and  self-evident :  it  cannot 
be  deduced  from  something  else.  The  existence  of  a 
supreme  Value  is  a  demand  of  personal  spirits,  who  find 
it  necessary  to  the  right  organisation  and  direction  of 
their  lives.  Without  this  postulate  of  an  Ultimate  Value, 
which  is  the  goal  of  spiritual  evolution,  there  would  be  no 
means  of  assuring  ourselves  that  the  process  was  really  a 
development  which  revealed  a  growth  of  spiritual  good.  For 
the  ideal  we  postulate  becomes  the  standard  by  which  we 
compare  and  appreciate  the  values  of  the  historic  process. 

1  A.  Dorner,  Grundriss  der  Eeligionsphilosophie,  1903,  p.  414  ff. 


250  RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT 

But  if  the  existence  of  an  Ultimate  Value  is  a 
postulate,  it  is  also  a  postulate  that  the  continuity  of 
spiritual  development  will  be  maintained  and  that  the 
goal  will  be  reached.  For  the  facts  do  not  necessarily 
yield  this  conclusion.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose,  as 
some  have  done,  that  there  are  immanent  principles  at 
work  in  the  spiritual  development  of  the  race  which 
will  inevitably  bring  about  the  realisation  of  the  ideal. 
The  study  of  the  past  does  not  reveal  these,  and  even 
though  it  did,  the  past  could  not  be  the  guarantee  of 
the  future.  That  the  ideal  of  spiritual  development  will 
be  realised  is  a  postulate  of  faith,  and  it  expresses  the 
demands  and  aspirations  working  in  our  spiritual  ex- 
perience. The  important  part  played  by  faith  is  manifest 
by  the  way  its  presence  or  absence  affects  man's  interpreta- 
tion of  religious  evolution.  When  there  is  no  faith  in 
the  reality  and  directive  power  of  the  Ideal,  men  refuse 
to  see  evidence  of  religious  progress.  To  the  materialist 
and  the  agnostic  the  history  of  religion  discloses  no  tokens 
of  an  increasing  good.  On  the  contrary,  it  appears  to 
be  a  long  and  sorry  story  of  vain  desires  and  fond 
imaginings:  it  began  in  gross  superstition  and  it  will 
end  in  total  disillusionment.  Of  course  no  one  can  come 
to  this  conclusion  and  at  the  same  time  '  think  nobly 
of  the  soul/  But  to  lose  faith  in  the  reality  of  the 
ideal  means,  in  the  long  run,  to  lose  faith  in  human 
nature  itself.  Our  faith  that  man  in  his  spiritual  develop- 
ment is  moving  forward,  despite  many  wanderings  and 
mistakes,  to  the  realisation  of  an  ultimate  Good,  is  like- 
wise a  faith  in  the  sanity  and  sincerity  of  the  human 
spirit.  Without  these  postulates  of  faith  spiritual  evolu- 
tion would  not  be  for  us  a  significant  process. 


PART  II. 

RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE   AND   ITS 
VALIDITY    (EPISTEMOLOGICAL). 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION  AND  THE 
PROBLEM  OF  VALIDITY. 

THE  Psychology  of  Religion  is  important,  because  it  is 
essential  to  know  the  facts  of  religious  experience  and  the 
way  in  which  they  work,  before  we  attempt  to  form  a 
theory  of  their  meaning.  In  the  case  of  the  physical 
sciences  it  is  possible,  in  view  of  the  purpose  on  hand,  to 
neglect  the  part  which  the  mind  plays  in  giving  form 
to  the  facts.  They  can  simply  be  accepted  as  given,  and 
then  interpreted  by  the  principle  of  causal  connexion. 
In  the  case  of  religion  it  is  not  possible  to  proceed  in  this 
fashion,  for  the  facts  with  which  we  deal  are  primarily 
psychical,  and  can  only  be  understood  as  processes  taking 
place  in  living  minds.  Rites  and  outward  acts  of  worship 
are  not  religious  facts  at  all,  unless  they  are  the  expression 
of  man's  beliefs  and  feelings,  and  reveal  his  desires  and 
purposes.  Hence  the  growing  recognition  which  is  ac- 
corded to  psychology  by  those  who  wish  to  study  religion 
in  the  making,  and  to  understand  what  it  really  is.  The 
psychologist  regards  religion  from  the  inner  side,  and  this 
is  the  condition  of  an  intelligent  insight.  To  attempt  to 
construct  a  philosophy  of  religion  apart  from  psychology, 
is  to  lay  oneself  open  to  the  charge  of  trying  to  explain 
without  actually  knowing  the  thing  you  are  explaining. 

261 


252      PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

The  method  of  the  religious  psychologist  is  empirical 
and  inductive,  and  he  must  set  out  from  the  correct 
observation  of  the  facts  which  present  themselves  to  the 
religious  mind.  This  preliminary  task  is,  however,  neither 
simple  nor  light ;  and  though  a  good  deal  has  been  done 
recently  in  the  way  of  collecting  and  sifting  material,  there 
is  much  which  yet  remains  to  be  done.  For  the  field  is 
very  wide,  and  the  phenomena  sometimes  complicated  and 
obscure.  But,  having  got  his  materials,  the  business  of 
the  psychologist  is  to  analyse  them,  and  to  show  how  they 
illustrate  and  express  the  general  principles  and  uniformi- 
ties of  psychical  phenomena.  Religion  is  a  product  of 
mind,  and  the  psychologist  will  seek  to  show  that  the 
product  reveals  the  working  of  mind.  While  trying  to  do 
his  duty  faithfully  in  this  respect,  the  psychologist  is  not 
pronouncing  on  the  truth  or  validity  of  the  phenomena  he 
is  examining.  He  deals  with  the  facts  as  illustrations  of 
the  laws  of  mental  process,  and  for  him  the  abnormal  and 
pathological  in  religion  are  as  well  worth  study  as  the 
ordinary  and  habitual  Hence  the  explanations  which  the 
psychologist  offers  are  provisional :  by  interpreting  the 
phenomena  of  the  religious  consciousness  in  the  light  of 
psychological  principles  he  gives  us  working  hypotheses, 
and  he  supplies  the  religious  philosopher  with  data  for 
the  construction  of  a  more  profound  and  comprehensive 
theory. 

The  spirit  in  which  the  psychologist  executes  his  work 
should  be  scientific.  He  ought  to  discharge  his  task  with 
an  unbiassed  mind,  though  in  practice,  while  investigating  a 
subject  like  religion,  it  is  well  nigh  impossible  for  any  one 
to  occupy  a  perfectly  detached  standpoint.  Nor  indeed  is 
an  attitude,  so  dispassionate  as  to  be  indifferent,  desirable. 
In  fact,  the  student  of  religion  requires  some  personal 
knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with  religion,  if  he  is  to  be 
successful  in  the  work  of  interpretation.  What  he  must 
guard  against  is  parti  pris,  the  bias  in  favour  of  a 
%  particular  theory  of  religion  which  inclines  a  man  to  look 
only  for  facts  which  will  verify  his  preconceived  opinions. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY      253 

Eeligion,  like  philosophy,  has  its  '  idols  of  the  tribe '  and 
of  the  '  market  place/  and  these  exercise  an  unwholesome 
tyranny  over  the  spirit.  We  have  no  right  to  demand 
that  the  student  of  the  Psychology  of  Eeligion  should  not 
prefer  one  religion  to  another ;  but  we  are  entitled  to  ask 
that  he  should  work  out  his  subject  with  an  open  mind 
and  display  an  impartial  judgment.  In  practice,  we  have 
hinted,  this  is  not  always  easy,  and  yet  it  is  a  condition  of 
fruitful  labour.  The  psychologist  falls  into  the  error 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  if  he  assumes  there  is 
no  explanation  of  religion  save  the  psychological,  and  that 
it  is  sufficient.  For  this  means  that  he  assumes  we  know 
the  claim  of  religion  to  an  objective  reference  is  not 
justified,  or  at  least  that  we  can  never  know  that  it  is. 
Consequently  he  interprets  the  divine  object  to  be  merely 
the  projection  of  human  desires,  and,  in  an  illegitimate  way, 
pronounces  a  judgment  of  validity  when  he  should  only 
have  pronounced  a  judgment  of  fact.  The  Positivist 
who  insists  on  interpreting  all  religious  phenomena  as 
'  survivals '  of  a  past  which  the  race  is  rapidly  outgrowing, 
sins  in  exactly  the  same  way.  On  the  other  side,  equally} 
unjustified  is  the  procedure  of  the  narrow  religionist  who 
begins  by  dividing  all  religions  into  true  and  false.  It 
may  be  right  to  say,  with  the  late  Professor  James,  that 
it  contradicts  the  very  spirit  of  life  to  be  indifferent 
or  neutral  on  the  question  of  the  world's  salvation.1 
Yet  our  interest  in  the  salvation  of  the  world  should 
not  preclude  us  from  dealing  faithfully  with  religious 
phenomena  whose  spirit  and  tendency  are  not  in  harmony 
with  our  own.  The  Christian  psychologist  who  sym- 
pathises with  the  desire  for  immortality  ought  not  on  that 
account  to  minimise  such  a  phenomenon  as  the  Buddhist 
aspiration  after  Nirvana.  If  the  chemist  or  biologist 
must  take  care  not  to  seek  only  for  facts  which  will 
verify  his  hypothesis,  the  duty  is  even  more  urgent  on  the 
student  of  religious  experience. 

But    however    valuable    the    psychological    study    of 

1  Pragmatism,  1912,  p.  285. 


254      PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

religion  may  be,  the  facts  themselves  hardly  allow  us  to 
rest  at  the  psychological  point  of  view.  The  tendency 
will  always  be  for  those  who  examine  religious  experience 
to  draw  conclusions,  expressed  or  unexpressed,  on  religious 
truth.  Religious  experiences,  in  point  of  fact,  do  not  come 
to  us  in  a  perfectly  pure  form,  so  that  they  can  be 
reckoned  as  immediate  data.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
psychologist  finds  that  presentations  and  representations, 
facts  and  meanings,  cannot  be  separated  by  a  hard  and 
narrow  line.  A  psychology  of  pure  presentations  or  facts 
is  not  practicable ;  for  psychical  facts  are  more  than  bare 
events ;  being  facts  for  a  self-conscious  mind  they  possess 
meaning  and  involve  inferences.  It  is  because  religious 
experiences  are  more  than  mere  events  that  they  acquire 
spiritual  significance  and  value,  and  play  a  part  in  the 
religious  life.  In  other  words,  the  so-called  psychological 
facts  of  religious  experience  under  analysis  lose  their 
prima  facie  simplicity:  they  are  really  fashioned  and 
coloured  by  the  connected  whole  of  spiritual  experience  in 
which  they  are  elements.  What  people  call  the  facts  of 
their  inner  religious  history  always  involve  in  some  degree 
a  process  of  interpretation  through  a  system  of  religious 
beliefs  and  ideas.  For  facts  thus  interpreted  truth  is 
claimed,  and  with  this  claim  the  possibility  of  error  is  not 
excluded.  Psychologists  point  out  that  facts  of  sense- 
perception,  which  seem  to  be  given  to  us  in  the  form  in 
which  they  appear,  are  really  due  to  a  process  of  uncon- 
scious interpretation  which  makes  them  what  they  are. 
Percepts  without  concepts,  as  Kant  remarked,  are  blind. 
And  those  who  study  religious  experience  and  its  phe- 
nomena are  irresistibly  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
same  process  is  constantly  present  there.  The  experiences 
associated  with  mysticism  show  this  very  clearly.  To  the 
mystic  himself,  no  doubt,  the  revelation  seems  to  come  from 
without,  and  to  be  independent  of  his  own  thought  and 
will.  But  if  we  examine  the  experience  we  shall  find 
that  the  mystic  has  helped  to  shape  it :  he  has  read  into 
it  the  beliefs  of  his  own  religious  system.  The  mystical 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   RELIGION    AND   VALIDITY      255 

experience,  it  has  been  said,  is  not  so  much  a  pure  ex- 
perience as  an  experience  penetrated  with  doctrine.1  To 
illustrate  this,  let  me  refer  to  a  well-known  vision  of 
St.  Teresa.  She  relates :  "  One  day,  being  in  orison,  it  was 
granted  me  to  perceive  in  one  instant  how  all  things  are 
seen  and  contained  in  God."  Another  day,  while  repeating 
the  Athanasian  Creed,  she  reports :  "  Our  Lord  made  me 
to  comprehend  in  what  way  it  is  that  one  God  can  be  in 
three  persons."  2  We  do  not  attribute  insincerity  to  the 
saint  when  we  say  that  her  vision  was  an  interpretation  in 
terms  of  the  doctrinal  system  of  her  Church.  No  such 
'  experience '  could  have  come  to  a  Hindu  mystic,  for 
example.  Again,  we  know  that  Luther  firmly  believed  in 
a  personal  devil,  and  thought  his  belief  was  grounded  on 
excellent  evidence.  The  intelligent  modern  Christian, 
breathing  a  '  scientific '  atmosphere,  has  no  longer  an  '  ex- 
perience '  of  the  kind ;  and  many  things  which  the  men 
of  an  older  time  held  to  be  plain  facts,  the  scientific 
student  of  to-day  declares  to  be  pathological  phenomena. 
Instances  might  be  multiplied,  but  the  point  I  wish  to 
emphasise  is,  that  the  so-called  data  of  religious  experience 
are  not  pure  data.  They  imply  a  system  of  beliefs,  and 
involve,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  a  process  of  interpreta- 
tion. Nor  would  they  have  religious  significance  apart 
from  these  implications.  We  shall  hardly  understand 
the  diversified  character  of  religious  experiences  in  differ- 
ent races  and  civilisations,  if  we  do  not  keep  this  in 
mind. 

Our  conclusion  is,  that  we  cannot  steadily  appeal  to 
the  facts  of  religious  experience  as  though  they  were  self- 
evident.  For  the  fact  that  you  have  an  experience  does 
not  guarantee  the  truth  of  the  meaning  you  read  into  the 
experience ;  and  the  certainty  of  mere  fact  is  not  identical 
with  the  truth-value  of  its  content.  Of  course  there  are 
cases  in  which  the  religious  man's  perceptions  are  so 

1  Delacroix,  Etudes  cPHistoire  et  de  Psychologie  du  Mysticisme,  1908, 
p.  348. 

8  James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  411. 


256      PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

direct  and  immediate  that  it  is  meaningless  to  doubt  or 
deny  them.  When,  for  instance,  he  tells  us  he  is  conscious 
of  a  discord  and  division  in  his  life  which  make  him  feel 
unhappy,  and  impel  him  to  seek  deliverance,  we  are  surely 
not  entitled  to  doubt  that  this  is  so,  granted  the  good 
faith  of  the  individual.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  same 
person  tells  us  he  feels  he  has  broken  the  law  of  God,  that 
this  breach  entails  certain  penalties,  but  it  will  be  pardoned 
on  certain  conditions, — then,  though  he  may  be  asserting 
what  is  true,  he  is  not  asserting  what  is  self-evident.  He 
is  putting  a  doctrinal  construction  on  his  experience  which 
can  at  least  have  its  validity  impugned,  and  in  any  case 
requires  to  be  sifted  and  tested.  Such  a  claim  cannot 
be  admitted  simply  on  demand,  however  sincerely  the 
demand  may  be  made. 

In  an  earlier  chapter  the  point  was  urged,  that  re- 
ligious belief  claims  to  be  true  and  to  have  a  real  object. 
Every  definite  belief,  whether  religious  or  no,  presupposes 
a  judgment,  and  judgment  always  refers  to  a  reality  beyond 
the  act  of  judging.  The  claim  made  for  a  judgment  may 
only  be  that  it  is  true  in  a  particular  '  universe  of  dis- 
course/ For  example,  'Titania  was  the  queen  of  the 
fairies/  and  '  Zeus  was  the  son  of  Cronos/  are  valid 
statements  when  we  are  speaking  of  fairyland  in  Shakes- 
peare's plays,  and  of  Greek  mythology.  If  belief  in  any 
form  attaches  to  a  judgment,  it  ceases  eo  ipso  to  be 
regarded  as  arbitrary,  and  claims  to  be  valid  under  some 
set  of  conditions.1  Now  it  is  a  feature  of  the  normal 
religious  consciousness  that  its  judgments  have  the  strong 

1  The  doctrine  that  every  judgment  refers  to  and  qualifies  Reality  as  an 
individual  whole  has  the  support  of  eminent  thinkers  like  Messrs.  Bradley 
and  Bosanquet.  But  this  theory  identifies  thought  with  reality  to  an 
extent  which  it  does  not  seem  possible  to  jnstify,  and  fails  to  provide  ade- 
quately for  the  fact  of  error.  If  we  sometimes  think  wrongly,  then  every 
judgment  cannot  enter  into  the  structure  of  the  real  universe.  It  is, 
however,  true  to  say  that  what  we  imagine  is  still  an  object,  for  it  is  what 
we  mean  or  intend  by  the  act  of  imagining.  And  though  not  real  it  has  a 
tendency  towards  reality  ;  for  we  try  if  the  thing  we  imagine  can  find  a 
place  in  the  real  world.  See  on  this  point  the  remarks  of  Lipps,  Vom 
Fuhlen,  fTollen,  und  Denkcn,  1902,  p.  55. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY      257 

emotional  colouring  which  characterises  vivid  belief.  The 
certainty  which  marks  religious  faith  rests  largely,  though 
not  entirely,  on  the  suggestive  power  of  feeling.  The 
religious  man  feels  that  his  ideas  must  be  true,  and  claims 
objective  validity  for  the  content  of  -his  acts  of  faith.  He 
affirms  that  the  object  of  his  faith  is  real  in  a  trans- 
subjective  sense :  it  is  recognised  by  him,  not  made  by 
him.  "  To  believe  that  God  is,  is  in  some  fashion  to 
believe  that  he  is,  independently  of  our  belief  in  him." 1 
Man  cannot  reverence  what  he  knows  to  be  a  fiction ; 
and  the  history  of  religion  is  the  record  of  deities  who 
passed  for  real  to  those  who  worshipped  them.  Whatever 
value  and  validity  we  may  assign  to  faith  in  the  religious 
life,  we  must  at  least  recognise  that  the  man  of  faith  does 
not  deal  in  possibilities,  nor  does  he  suppose  that  "  prob- 
ability is  the  guide  of  life."  He  does  not  make  postulates 
merely  on  the  ground  that  they  may  prove  helpful.  He 
affirms  the  divine  object  to  be  real  in  itself,  and  the  act  of 
affirming  it  to  be  true  and  valid. 

Does  religion,  since  it  claims  validity  for  its  beliefs, 
seek  to  make  good  the  claim  which  it  puts  forward  ?  No 
doubt  for  many  religious  people  the  emotional  certainty 
with  which  beliefs  are  held  is  a  sufficient  attestation  of 
their  truth.  The  cognitive  side  of  faith  is  dominated  and 
controlled  by  the  emotional.  Nevertheless  in  the  case  of 
developed  religion  this  marked  subordination  of  the  cog- 
nitive to  the  affective  or  feeling-interest  is  not  always 
possible.  For  thought  has  now  wakened  to  its  mission, 
and  has  been  busy  explaining  things  by  showing  they 
are  elements  in  a  rational  order.  Alongside  religion  a 
thinking  view  of  the  world  has  developed,  and  an  effort 
is  made  to  show  that  the  validity  claimed  for  religious 
ideas  is  consistent  with  this  rational  order.  Men  are 
naturally  disposed  to  believe  that  what  feeling  claims  to 
be  true  reason  can  also  justify.  It  has  been  said,  indeed, 
that  the  cognitive  and  feeling-factors  in  the  faith-state 
are  never  in  perfect  harmony,  and  they  cannot  blend  in  a 

1  Boutroux,  Science  et  Religion,  p.  334. 
17 


258      PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

true  unity.  The  one  element  tends  to  overcome  or  dis- 
place the  other.  Professor  H.  Maier  contends  that  the 
emotional  interest  only  works  pure  and  unimpaired  in  the 
sphere  of  religious  belief,  so  long  as  it  controls  the 
cognitive  need.1  And  he  urges  that  warmth  of  religious 
feeling  tends  to  fade,  whenever  the  spirit  of  philosophical 
speculation  begins  to  dominate  the  ideas  of  faith.  In  the 
result,  on  this  view,  we  have  a  dualism  between  the 
cognitive  and  emotional  elements  in  faith,  a  dualism 
which,  it  is  said,  will  persist,  because  it  springs  from  the 
finitude  of  human  nature.  Without  denying  the  great 
importance  of  feeling  in  faith,  we  venture  to  think  the 
antithesis  between  the  emotional  and  intellective  elements 
is  too  sharply  drawn.  Feelings  suggest  ideas  and  ideas 
in  turn  evoke  feelings,  and  the  two  are  necessary  to  each 
other.  Feeling  prompts  the  mind  to  claim  truth  for  its 
religion,  and  ideas  in  themselves  cannot  be  antagonistic  to 
the  mental  process  which  seeks  to  justify  the  claim.  And 
even  when  thought  declines  to  endorse  the  demands  of 
feeling,  feeling  will  sometimes  acquiesce  in  the  refusal  and 
try  to  adjust  itself  to  the  new  situation.  Faith  and 
knowledge  alike  fall  within  the  activity  of  the  personal 
life,  and  the  difference  between  them  does  not  amount  to  a 
settled  discord.  The  existence  of  a  difference  of  the  kind 
calls  for  an  endeavour  to  overcome  it,  for  man  ever 
desires  that  the  object  of  faith  should  both  satisfy  the 
feelings  and  be  valid  for  thought. 

We  must  admit  that  the  subjective  feeling  of  certainty' 
with  which  a  man  holds  his  religious  beliefs  is  no  sufficient 
guarantee  of  their  truth.  To  put  the  matter  in  the  most 
general  way:  the  psychological  feeling  of  certainty  does 
not  in  itself  give  the  assurance  of  epistemological  validity.  / 
In  ordinary  experience  we  are  all  familiar  with  the  fact, 
how  it  is  possible  to  feel  very  sure  and  in  the  end  to  find 
that  we  have  been  mistaken.  And  we  cannot  proceed  far 
in  the  study  of  religious  beliefs  without  realising  how 

1  Psychologic  des   Emotionalen  Denkens,  1908,  p.  541  ff.      Maier's  dis- 
cussion is  able  and  suggestive. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION   AND    VALIDITY      259 

utterly  hopeless  it  would  be  to  establish  the  validity  of 
them  all.  For  many  of  these  beliefs  will  not  cohere  with 
one  another,  and  are,  besides,  inconsistent  with  knowledge 
which  we  possess.  At  one  stage  men  are  sure  that  many 
deities  exist,  and  at  a  later  stage  they  are  convinced  there 
is  only  one ;  now  God  is  conceived  to  possess  the  attributes 
of  a  man,  only  in  an  extraordinary  degree,  and  now  he  is 
conceived  to  be  an  infinite  and  eternal  Spirit,  omnipotent, 
omniscient,  and  omnipresent ;  at  one  time  salvation  is 
found  in  the  punctual  and  scrupulous  performance  of  ritual 
obligations,  and  at  another  it  is  found  in  the  inner  con- 
dition of  the  soul.  Hence  every  one  recognises  it  is 
impossible  to  establish  every  claim  to  religious  validity, 
unless  indeed  you  are  to  fall  back  on  the  ancient  and 
thoroughly  sceptical  maxim  :  "  What  seems  to  each  man 
to  be  true  is  true  to  him."  Needless  to  say  this  principle 
would  be  destructive  of  religion,  for  religion  is  a  social 
bond  and  rule  of  life,  not  a  shifting  and  ill-defined  mass  of 
private  beliefs.  If,  then,  the  conflict  of  religious  ideas  and 
systems  calls  for  selection  and  differentiation  between  them, 
if  at  the  least  we  must  distinguish  degrees  of  validity ;  on 
what  principle  are  we  to  proceed  and  what  test  are  we  to 
apply  ?  This  question  would  not  be  a  difficult  and  per- 
plexing one,  were  it  possible  to  contend  that  man  is  in 
possession  of  an  absolute  knowledge  of  God,  the  world,  and 
himself,  in  the  light  of  which  he  can  determine  the  degree 
of  truth  in  every  form  of  belief.  But  we  cannot  vindicate 
such  a  claim  to  knowledge,  and  few  or  none  at  present 
would  care  to  make  it.  On  the  other  hand,  to  fall  back 
on  'unreasoned  immediate  assurance'  is  not  practicable, 
unless  it  were  the  case,  which  it  is  not,  that  these  assur- 
ances led  steadily  to  the  same  conclusion.  In  these 
circumstances  it  is  hardly  surprising  that  there  should  be 
a  strong  inclination  to  set  aside  the  intellectual  criterion  of 
religious  validity,  and  to  substitute  for  it  a  practical  test. 
Why,  it  is  urged,  should  we  hold  to  a  criterion  which  the 
knowledge  at  our  disposal  does  not  enable  us  to  use 
effectively  ?  The  essence  of  truth,  we  are  told,  is  value ; 


260      PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

and  religious  beliefs  which  approve  themselves  to  be  good 
working  values  thereby  verify  themselves,  and  may  be 
taken  for  true.  If  we  study,  then,  the  working  of  religious 
beliefs  in  individual  and  social  experience,  we  shall  find 
that  those  which  show  themselves  practically  valuable  are 
to  all  intents  and  purposes  true.  This  is  the  solution  of 
the  problem  put  forward  by  Pragmatists,  and  we  are 
assured  it  is  '  sufficient  for  practical  purposes.'  The  sane 
and  effectual  way  to  decide  between  rival  beliefs  is  to 
judge  them  by  their  consequences.  The  test,  it  will  be 
noted,  does  not  rest  on  any  a  priori  conception  of  what 
religion  ought  to  be :  it  is  a  purely  empirical  test,  a  judg- 
ment by  results.  I  am  ready  to  admit  that  the  pragmatic 
way  of  looking  at  the  question  is  important  and  helpful, 
and  there  is  a  pragmatic  flavour  in  the  saying  of  the  New 
Testament:  "If  any  man  willeth  to  do  God's  will,  he 
shall  know  of  the  doctrine." l  I  will,  however,  postpone 
to  a  later  chapter  the  fuller  discussion  of  the  problem  of 
truth  in  its  relation  to  rationality  and  to  value.  At 
present  I  will  confine  myself  to  a  short  explanation  why, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  the  pragmatic  criterion  is  not  a  sufficient 
determination  of  religious  validity. 

The  test  of  working-value  appears  to  be  simple,  but 
it  is  not  so  simple  as  it  appears.  One  can  draw  broad 
conclusions  on  the  practical  value  of  a  religion  in  history, 
when  the  historical  evidence  is  sufficient  for  that  purpose. 
But  every  religion  is  a  complex  of  beliefs,  and  a  knowledge 
of  the  value  of  a  religion  as  a  whole  does  not  decide  the 
specific  worth  of  any  one  of  these  beliefs.  We  cannot,  to 
take  an  illustration,  fairly  argue  from  the  success  of 
Christianity  that  its  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment  is 
true.  The  whole  problem,  moreover,  becomes  more 
difficult,  because  it  is  often  the  case  that  a  particular 
doctrine  is  much  more  helpful  to  one  individual  than  to 
another,  and  a  belief  which  proves  valuable  in  one  age 
may  lose  its  importance  in  another.  Nor  would  it  be 
easy  to  give  an  extended  and  full  survey  of  the  practical 
1  John  vii.  17. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION    AND   VALIDITY      261 

value  of  any  belief,  so  as  to  ensure  the  certainty  of  the 
inference  drawn.  Hence  the  individual  would  tend  to 
decide  the  historic  question  of  value  by  an  act  of  faith, 
based  on  his  own  appreciation  of  the  doctrine  in  question. 
In  these  circumstances  one  would  look  for  very  different 
estimates  from  different  individuals.  Two  quotations 
from  Prof.  James  are  of  interest  here,  for  they  appear  to 
confirm  our  opinion  of  the  lack  of  cogency  and  universality 
in  the  purely  pragmatic  inference.  The  pragmatist,  he 
tells  us,  "is  willing  to  live  on  a  scheme  of  uncertified 
possibilities  which  he  trusts."  Again  :  "  Pragmatism  has  to 
postpone  dogmatic  answer,  for  we  do  not  yet  know  certainly 
which  type  of  religion  is  going  to  work  best  in  the  long 
run."  1  The  admission  is  significant,  for  it  means  that  the 
test  of  working-value  cannot  be  made  complete  enough  to 
be  quite  convincing.  Though  judgment  by  results  seems 
a  safe  rule,  yet  everything  depends  on  the  scope  and 
character  of  the  results.  And  it  would  surely  be  a 
hazardous  step  to  proclaim  that  the  success  of  a  religion 
at  a  particular  period  was  a  token  of  its  validity,  or  that 
a  religion  which  sinks  into  corruption  for  a  time  was 
therefore  not  true.  On  these  lines  we  might  establish  the 
truth  of  Buddhism  or  Mohammedanism  when  they  were 
vigorous  and  expanding  faiths,  and  decide  that  Christianity 
was  not  true  during  the  degradation  of  the  Church  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  Of  course  it  will  be  said  you  must  make  a 
more  exhaustive  test ;  but  the  point  is  that  even  then  we 
do  not  have  completeness.  And  what  of  the  working  of 
religious  systems  and  ideas  in  the  future  ?  Here  assuredly 
we  must  fall  back  on  faith.  The  purely  empirical  method 
thus  comes  short  of  offering  a  conclusive  test,  and  requires 
to  be  supplemented  by  faith.  This  means  that  individual 
experience  would  play  the  chief  part  in  determining  what 
is  valuable  and  so  valid  in  religion.  But  individual 
experience,  even  within  a  particular  race,  is  very  various, 
and  could  not  yield  that  coherency  of  belief  which  is 
essential  to  truth.  No  wise  man  will  belittle  the  notion 

1  Pragmatism,  pp.  297-298,  300-301. 


262      PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION    AND   VALIDITY 

of  practical  value,  for  it  plays  no  small  part  in  giving 
stability  and  assurance  to  religious  convictions.  None  the 
less  it  does  not  seein  capable  of  being  made  the  sole  and 
sufficient  criterion  of  religious  truth. 

The  movement  to  resolve  truth  into  practical  worth 
frequently  seeks  support  in  biological  principles  and 
analogies.  Thought,  it  is  held,  is  merely  a  functional 
development  of  the  life-process,  which  is  designed  to 
subserve  the  needs  of  the  individual  and  the  race.  It  is 
always  subordinate  and  a  means.  The  practical  demands 
of  life  are  supreme :  thought  emerges  as  a  means  to  an 
end,  and  truth  is  value  for  an  end.  The  truth  of  religious 
ideas  is  their  functional  value  for  human  purposes.  On 
this  showing  it  becomes  superfluous  to  inquire  if  there  is 
any  reality  corresponding  to  the  idea  of  God,  for  the 
significance  of  the  idea  is  just  its  usefulness.  "  The  truth 
of  the  matter  may  be  put  in  this  way :  God  is  not  known, 
He  is  not  understood;  He  is  used — used  a  good  deal,  and 
with  an  admirable  disregard  of  logical  consistency,  some- 
times as  meat  purveyor,  sometimes  as  moral  support, 
sometimes  as  friend,  sometimes  as  an  object  of  love."  1  The 
conclusion  to  be  drawn  is,  that  "  the  chief  difficulties  con- 
cerning the  truth  of  ideas  arise  from  attempts  to  estimate 
their  validity  out  of  relation  to  the  only  situations  in  which 
they  can  be  true  or  false,  that  is,  the  situations  involving 
conduct.  The  idea  of  God  has  been  treated  in  this  way." 2 
The  result  of  this  line  of  thought  is  to  empty  the  idea  of 
God  of  objective  or  independent  reality.  Of  God  in  the 
latter  sense  we  neither  know  nor  can  know  anything. 
One  cannot  see  that  this  conception  of  Deity  differs  from 
a  convenient  fiction,  which  proves  practically  serviceable. 
A  modern  investigator  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Hobbes 
might  welcome  this  conclusion,  but  the  normal  religious 
man  simply  cannot  accept  it.  For  him  the  God  who 
ceases  to  be  independently  real  ceases  at  the  same  time  to 

1  Prof.  Leuba,  as  quoted  by  Ames,  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience, 
p.  314. 

2  Ames,  op.  tit.  p.  317. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION    AND   VALIDITY      263 

be  useful :  value  cannot  maintain  itself  apart  from  validity. 
How  far  we  can  justify  the  normal  religious  consciousness 
in  its  claim  to  truth  is  a  question  which  has  to  be  solved, 
but  the  attempt  to  solve  it  should  proceed  by  a  different 
method.  We  reach  no  satisfying  solution  by  the  simple 
reduction  of  truths  to  values. 

If  we  cannot  reach  an  answer  to  our  difficulties  by 
identifying  truths  with  practically  useful  beliefs,  we  must 
endeavour  to  put  the  problem  in  another  way :  we  may 
ask,  not  what  we  find  it  useful  to  believe,  but  what  we 
ought  to  believe  in  order  that  our  belief  may  be  a  valid 
and  trustworthy  experience.  Are  there  not  normative 
principles  of  the  religious  consciousness — principles  pre- 
supposed in  empirical  experience  yet  not  created  by  it — 
which  give  validity  to  religious  ideas  and  beliefs  ?  If  so, 
then  when  we  recognise  and  conform  to  these  principles 
are  we  moving  on  the  line  of  religious  truth  ?  To  put  the 
problem  in  this  way  suggests  an  endeavour  to  deal  with 
it  on  Kantian  lines  and  by  the  help  of  a  priori  elements. 
But  a  little  reflexion  will  make  it  clear  that  this  method 
is  not  strictly  applicable  in  the  case  of  religion.  To  say 
that  spiritual  experience  points  us  to  a  rational  and  a  priori 
element  which  determines  the  objective  truth  of  religion 
may  sound  well,  but  it  does  not  carry  us  further  on  the 
way  to  establish  the  validity  of  any  particular  belief.1 
One  can  hardly  suppose  there  would  be  general  agreement 
about  the  existence  of  such  an  a  priori,  and  even  if  such 
a  factor  did  exist,  it  would  be  too  abstract  to  be  of  use  in 
determining  the  truth  of  different  types  of  religious  doctrine 
and  life.  Still  there  is  an  element  of  right  in  this  method 
which  pure  empiricism  ignores ;  for  there  is  some  recogni- 
tion of  the  truth  that  the  spiritual  nature  of  man  is  the 
universal  presupposition  of  religious  experience.  Man  is 
religious  because  it  is  his  nature  to  be  religious ;  and  his 
nature  is  not  created  by  his  experience,  but  helps  to  shape 
it.  Human  experience  implies  a  reaction  of  the  self  on 

1  Troeltsch,  Psychologic  und  ErTcentnistheorie,  tries  to  reach  the  idea  of 
religious  validity  through  a  modified  Kantian  epistemology. 


264      PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

what  is  given,  and  it  is  the  character  of  the  self  which 
counts  most.  Beyond  doubt  the  postulate  which  makes 
intelligible  the  far-reaching  similarities  of  religion,  is  the 
fundamental  identity  of  human  nature.  Religious  ex- 
perience everywhere  bears  the  impress  of  that  nature. 

Man  makes  his  religion,  and  he  must  judge  of  its  value 
and  validity  by  the  faculties  with  which  he  has  been 
endowed.  He  must  judge  with  the  means  at  his  disposal, 
and  he  may  fall  into  error  or  mistake  half  truths  for  truths. 
The  weakness  of  mortal  powers  seems  to  make  the  quest 
of  spiritual  truth  a  hazardous  one,  and  we  shall  be  told 
there  is  a  more  excellent  way.  The  claim  may  be  made 
for  authentic  historic  facts,  that  they  decide  the  question 
of  religious  truth.  These  facts,  it  is  argued,  are  of  such 
a  kind  that  they  assure  us  of  the  validity  of  the  truths  to 
which  they  bear  witness,  and  establish  them  on  a  basis  of 
their  own.  So  the  truth  of  certain  religious  doctrines  is 
guaranteed  historically,  and  they  bear  evidence  of  a  divine 
origin.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  discuss  here  what  can  be 
regarded  as  divinely  revealed,  and  what  can  be  regarded  as 
elaborated  by  man.  But  it  must  be  pointed  out  that  the 
problem  of  religious  truth  cannot  be  summarily  solved  in 
this  way.  It  will  not  be  maintained  that  the  claim  to  be 
authoritative  truth  carries  the  evidence  of  its  validity  on 
its  face.  Certainly  it  is  not  the  case  that  the  claim  has 
only  to  be  stated  to  be  accepted :  the  plain  fact  is  that  it 
is  admitted  by  some  and  rejected  by  others.  But  those 
who  admit  the  claim  can  only  do  so  in  virtue  of  the 
manner  in  which  the  evidence  appeals  to  them,  and 
produces  in  them  the  conviction  of  truth.  In  the  last 
resort  conviction  of  truth,  though  it  be  historically  mediated, 
comes  from  the  working  of  the  human  mind,  which  is 
satisfied  that  the  demands  of  truth  are  fulfilled.  Apart 
from  living  minds,  historical  data  could  not  become  spiritual 
values  and  assume  a  religious  significance.  The  inner 
witness  of  the  spirit  is  essential,  and  without  it  historical 
proofs  count  for  very  little,  as  many  theologians  have 
recognised.  We  cannot  therefore  get  away  from  the  fact 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY      265 

that  the  recognition  and  assertion  of  religious  validity 
proceed  from  the  self-conscious  mind  of  man,  and  signify 
that  the  mind  experiences  the  feeling  of  satisfaction  and 
harmony  which  is  the  note  of  truth.  The  essence  of  a 
truth  called  '  authoritative '  is  the  nature  of  the  assent 
which  it  evokes  from  the  human  spirit. 

We  shall  be  told,  perhaps,  that  we  have  returned  to 
a  subjective  standpoint,  and  have  laid  ourselves  open  to 
the  objections  urged  against  empirical  value  when  taken 
for  the  sole  test  of  spiritual  truth.  And  the  objection 
would  be  justified  if  the  conviction  of  truth  varied  with 
the  experience  and  inclinations  of  individuals.  But  what 
is  subjective  is  not  perforce  individual  and  arbitrary. 
'  Man  is  the  measure '  is  not  the  symbol  of  scepticism,  so 
long  as  there  is  a  universal  nature  in  man  which  is 
normative.  And  plainly  we  cannot  derive  validity  from 
a  narrow  and  partial  conception  of  the  nature  of  man. 
The  spiritual  satisfaction  which  is  a  token  of  truth  must 
involve  all  the  psychical  factors  in  a  working  harmony : 
it  requires  the  response  and  assent  of  the  whole  man. 
Hence  the  truth  of  a  religion  will  be  decided  by  the  way 
in  which  its  conception  of  the  world  satisfies  the  reason, 
its  practical  ideal  the  will,  and  its  presentation  of  the 
religious  relation  the  feelings  and  emotions.  The  more 
fully  the  different  elements  support  and  supplement  one 
another,  the  greater  is  the  assurance  of  religious  truth. 
Let  us  see  how  this  principle  works  in  a  concrete  case. 
We  are  asked,  let  us  say,  to  pronounce  on  the  relative 
validity  of  polytheism  and  of  monotheism.  In  this  instance 
there  will  be  no  difficulty  in  deciding  that  monotheism 
satisfies  far  better  the  demands  of  thought  for  coherency 
and  purpose  in  the  world ;  while  it  gives  a  unity  and 
consistency  to  the  practical  life,  and  a  rallying  centre  to 
the  feelings,  which  polytheism  is  powerless  to  give.  Here 
there  should  be  no  hesitation  in  pronouncing  where  the 
greater  truth  lies.  Moreover,  while  empirical  value  cannot 
by  itself  yield  a  sufficient  test  of  religious  validity,  yet  it 
is  of  much  importance  as  a  support  and  confirmation. 


266      PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION    AND   VALIDITY 

This  is  especially  the  case  when  we  take  a  large  view, 
and  consider  the  working-value  of  a  particular  form  of 
religion  in  the  wide  field  of  historic  experience.  In  the 
present  instance  beyond  doubt  the  historic  judgment  con- 
firms the  validity  of  the  monotheistic  faith  as  against 
polytheistic,  for  the  former  type  of  religion  certainly 
produces  a  superior  kind  of  spiritual  character  and  life 
to  the  latter.  Further,  the  practical  value  of  a  religion 
is  seen  in  its  capacity  to  develop  and  to  meet  the  needs 
of  an  advancing  culture.  Monotheism  assuredly  does 
possess  the  power  of  development  to  a  far  greater  degree 
than  polytheism,  which  tends  to  dissolve  and  pass  away  in 
the  presence  of  growing  civilisation. 

The  conclusion  to  which  we  come  is,  that  the  problem 
of  validity  must  be  decided  by  the  whole  nature  of  man  in 
its  rational  and  practical  aspects,  supplemented  by  the  test 
of  working  value  in  human  experience.  This  may  not 
appear  a  simple  test ;  but  the  problem  to  be  solved  is  not 
simple,  and  I  believe  no  easier  way  is  open  to  us.  It  is 
natural,  when  we  are  dealing  with  truth,  to  lay  stress  on 
the  need  that  belief  should  be  justified  by  the  intellect ; 
but  it  is  hopeless  to  make  reason  the  sole  criterion  of 
religious  validity.  This  would  be  feasible  could  we  attain 
to  an  absolute  knowledge,  in  the  light  of  which  each  claim 
to  truth  could  be  finally  evaluated.  But  the  claim  to 
complete  knowledge  breaks  down,  and  we  are  fated  to  live 
in  a  world  which  is  only  partially  rationalised.  To  reject 
a  deliverance  of  religious  experience  simply  because  thought 
fails  to  justify  it  would  therefore  be  wrong,  though  we 
may  rightly  refuse  assent  to  a  religious  belief  which  con- 
tradicts or  is  inconsistent  with  the  results  of  knowledge. 
It  is  very  desirable  that  we  should  judge  with  a  sane  and 
impartial  mind  the  office  of  reason  in  determining  religious 
validity,  neither  magnifying  nor  minimising  that  office. 
At  present  there  is  a  reaction  in  favour  of  empirical 
methods  and  tests.  The  Humanism  represented  by  the 
late  Prof.  James  loves  to  depreciate  the  value  of  reason 
in  religion,  and  tends  to  return  to  the  position  of  Hume, 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY      267 

who  declared  that  reason  is  and  must  be  the  '  slave  of  the 
feelings.'  James  minimises  the  very  important  part 
played  by  ideas  in  religious  experience,  and  consequently 
exalts  the  role  of  feeling.  So  rationality  is  reduced  to  a 
surface  manifestation,  a  process  controlled  and  guided  by 
feeling,  and  it  does  not  enter  into  the  substance  of  the 
religious  life.  "  Eationalisation  is  a  relatively  superficial 
and  unreal  path  to  the  Deity."1  If  we  follow  out  the 
line  taken  by  Prof.  James,  like  him  proclaiming  the  help- 
lessness and  futility  of  reason  in  religion,  one  cannot  see 
why  we  should  not  admit  the  validity  of  any  type  of 
religion  which  provokes  strong  feeling  and  has  had  some 
measure  of  practical  success.  Against  this  theory  it  is 
necessary  to  insist  that  thought  ought  to  have  a  voice  in 
the  decision.  So  long  as  ideas,  inferences,  and  doctrines 
enter  into  the  structure  of  religion,  reason  must  be  allowed 
to  exercise  criticism  upon  them,  and  to  jeject  those  which 
will  not  cohere  with  the  rational  view  of  the  world  so  far 
as  it  has  been  established.  Eeligion,  it  has  been  justly 
said,  cannot  maintain  its  claim  to  truthfulness  and  refuse 
to  adjust  itself  to  the  scientific  and  philosophic  knowledge 
of  the  real  world.2  In  point  of  fact  it  is  owing  to  a  failure 
to  readjust  themselves,  that  many  religious  beliefs  have 
become  so  discredited  that  no  urgency  of  feeling  can  revive 
them.  The  importance  of  theoretical  consent  is  seen  in 
the  assumption  which  most  people  make,  that,  though 
under  present  conditions  they  cannot  rationally  justify 
certain  beliefs,  they  could  justify  them  were  their  know- 
ledge fuller  and  deeper.  By  safeguarding  the  privileges 
of  reason  we  retain  the  right  to  examine,  and  if  need  be  to 
discard,  those  anthropomorphic  representations  which  are 
present  more  or  less  in  all  religions.  The  ordinary  religious 
consciousness  does  not  raise  the  question  of  their  validity ; 
but  criticism  is  bound  to  raise  it,  and  a  philosophy  of 
religion  which  eschewed  critical  and  reflective  methods 
would  be  worthless.  Even  though  we  felt  sure  that  these 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  414. 

2  Ladd,  Philosophy  of  Religion,  vol.  i.  p.  74. 


268      PSYCHOLOGY    OF   RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

conceptions  justified  themselves  practically,  in  the  interests 
of  religion  we  should  be  compelled  to  defend  them  against 
critical  attacks.  Moreover,  there  is  the  further  difficulty, 
and  it  cannot  be  ignored,  the  difficulty  that  anthropo- 
morphic ideas  in  religion  are  seldom  consistent  with  one 
another.  Attributes  like  justice  and  mercy,  passions  like 
wrath  and  love,  are  predicated  of  the  Deity,  and  are  left 
unharmonised  in  their  working.  And  if  reflective  thought 
be  employed  to  bring  about  harmony,  its  right  to  exercise 
itself  on  the  representations  as  a  whole  cannot  logically  be 
denied.  The  denial  of  the  claim  of  reason  to  contribute  to 
the  determination  of  religious  validity  is,  in  the  long  run, 
detrimental  to  the  best  interests  of  religion  itself.  For 
the  result  of  the  refusal  will  be  a  discord  between  religious 
belief  and  scientific  knowledge,  which  will  alienate  from 
religion  the  most  active  and  progressive  minds.  This  is 
illustrated  to-day  by  the  relation  of  scientific  and  philo- 
sophic thought  to  the  theology  of  the  Koman  Catholic 
Church. 

On  the  question  of  the  function  of  reason  in  religion 
two  extreme  views  may  be  taken :  it  may  be  said  that 
rationality  is  a  final  and  exhaustive  test  of  religious  validity, 
and  it  may  be  denied  that  it  is  a  test  at  all.  But  though 
we  refuse  the  second  alternative,  we  are  not  thereby  com- 
mitted to  the  first.  We  have  already  frankly  conceded 
that  we  cannot  completely  rationalise  religion.  And  this 
is  particularly  evident  in  the  case  of  a  religion  which  claims 
to  have  a  supramundane  source,  and  points  to  a  goal  beyond 
the  present  order  of  the  world.  We  are  not  able,  it  is 
plain,  to  establish  the  truth  of  the  conception  of  a  Being 
who  transcends  the  world,  through  the  methods  by  which 
we  establish  the  existence  of  coherence  and  rationality 
within  the  given  world.  For  this  would  mean  that  the 
notion  of  transcendency  was  sacrificed  and  was  replaced  by 
a  purely  immanent  conception.  Hence  the  claim  of  religion 
to  contain  a  revelation  from  a  transcendent  God  can  never 
admit  of  proof  in  the  scientific  sense,  for  such  a  revelation 
could  never  be  explained  in  terms  of  the  mundane  order  of 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY      269 

experience.  But  realities  which  go  beyond  the  mundane 
system  of  knowledge,  if  they  cannot  be  verified  through  it, 
ought  at  least  not  to  be  inconsistent  with  it.  A  doctrine, 
even  when  it  claims  to  be  revealed,  ought  not  to  contradict 
our  rational  knowledge  of  the  world ;  and  if  it  does  so,  the 
claim  to  be  revealed  truth  cannot  be  admitted.  The  details 
of  the  Hebrew  Cosmogony  are  an  illustration.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  testimony  of  religious  people  to  the  posses- 
sion of  a  spiritual  life  proceeding  from  a  supramundane 
source  contradicts  no  postulate  ^of  rational  knowledge, 
though  reason  "cannot  demonstrate  its  *  truth.  In  this 
instance,  where  reason  has  no  valid  objection  to  urge,  the 
claim  to  truth  would  fall  to  be  established  by  individual 
and  social  experience,  and  by  the  testimony  of  history. 
Here  one  would  justly  attach  much  weight  to  the  evidence 
of  working- value. 

The  problem  of  validity  in  religion,  we  may  be  allowed 
to  repeat,  is  complex  and  difficult.  It  cannot  be  settled  on 
a  single  principle  and  in  a  rapid  and  clear-cut  fashion. 
Religion  involves  the  whole  man,  and  in  judging  of  religious 
beliefs  we  must  consider  their  relation  to  all  the  aspects  of 
our  psychical  nature.  Only  the  mutual  support  of  the 
theoretical  and  practical  reason  can  give  a  sufficient 
assurance  of  religious  truth.  But  the  question  of  the 
ultimate  truth  of  religion  belongs  to  the  final  stage  of  a 
philosophy  of  religion.  In  preparation  for  this,  however, 
it  is  necessary  to  discuss  a  number  of  important  points 
mainly  of  an  epistemological  character.  Faith  implies  a 
cognitive  element,  and  the  religious  man  claims  to  have  a 
knowledge  of  the  object  or  objects  which  he  reverences. 
Where  he  does  not  claim  to  have  a  theoretical  assurance, 
he  at  least  asserts  that  he  possesses  a  spiritual  insight  and 
conviction.  In  opposition  to  this  claim  the  argument  is 
sometimes  put  forward,  that  the  nature  and  limitations  of 
the  human  mind  preclude  any  real  knowledge  of  the  kind. 
We  are  told  that  the  forms  of  thought  which  man  employs 
to  express  his  religious  beliefs  are  strictly  applicable  to 
objects  within  the  realm  of  mundane  experience,  and  lose 


270      PSYCHOLOGY   OF    RELIGION   AND   VALIDITY 

their  validity  when  applied  to  God  and  divine  things.  To 
speak,  for  example,  of  a  supreme  First  Cause,  or  of  a 
Divine  Government  of  the  Universe  according  to  ends,  is 
an  illegitimate  use  of  a  purely  human  category.  Plainly 
if  this  argument  can  be  justified,  a  great  many  time- 
honoured  religious  beliefs  are  invalid.  In  order  to  meet  a 
sceptical  attack  from  this  side  we  must  inquire  into  the 
conditions  and  methods  of  knowledge,  and  of  religious 
knowledge  in  particular.  This  inquiry  will  lead  up  to 
the  final  problems  of  religious  philosophy. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  NATUKE  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

THE  nature  of  knowledge  and  the  validity  which  attaches 
to  the  knowing  process  are  matters  of  vital  interest  to 
the  religious  philosopher.  For  there  is  a  cognitive  element 
in  faith,  and  it  involves  a  claim  to  know.  The  religious 
man  is  deeply  concerned  to  maintain  that  what  is  spiritually 
valuable  is  theoretically  true,  and  that  the  ideal  is  also 
real.  The  scepticism  which  declares  the  mind,  from  its 
nature,  is  incapable  of  knowing  what  is  ultimately  real, 
undermines  the  foundations  of  religion  as  well  as  morality. 
Man  cannot  base  his  trust  or  found  his  conduct  on  assump- 
tions which  he  recognises  to  be  fictitious.  Yet  the  question 
of  the  validity  of  knowledge  is  not  one  which  troubled 
man  in  the  earlier  stages  of  his  development ;  and  he  had 
been  for  ages  religious  without  concerning  himself  with 
the  inquiry,  whether  he  was  capable  of  knowing  a  divine 
Being.  To  the  primitive  man  whose  gods  were  part  of 
his  environment,  the  question  would  have  appeared  un- 
meaning. What  room  was  there  to  doubt  when  the  spirits 
beset  him  before  and  behind,  and  gave  constant  tokens  of 
their  activity !  Man  was  not  yet  perplexed  by  the  fateful 
contrast  between  appearance  and  reality,  and  a  vision  of 
the  night  was  as  real  as  a  presentation  to  the  waking 
mind.  The  slow  growth  of  reflexion  taught  man  to 
distinguish  between  the  facts  of  sense-perception  and  the 
dream  or  memory  image,  and  hard  experience  forced  him 
to  separate  between  what  seemed  to  be  and  what  truly 
was.  And  in  religion  the  disappointments  of  expectation 
as  well  as  the  vagaries  and  inconsistencies  of  religious 

271 


272  THE   NATURE   OF    KNOWLEDGE 

belief,  provoked  him  to  doubt  whether  the  things  in  heaven 
must  always  conform  to  his  image  of  them.  This  problem 
once  raised  continued  to  haunt  men,  as  we  see  in  the 
movement  initiated  by  Xenophanes  in  Greece ;  and  the 
na'ive  simplicity  and  confidence  of  early  belief  cannot 
return.  Faith  now  has  to  maintain  itself  against  doubt, 
and  on  demand  it  must  be  ready  to  give  a  reason  for 
itself.  But  if  faith  in  presence  of  doubt  loses  something 
of  its  young  assurance,  where  it  persists  it  does  so  in 
the  higher  form  of  deliberate  and  personal  conviction. 

An  inquiry,  therefore,  into  the  nature  and  validity 
of  knowledge  in  general  is  relevant  to  the  question  of 
religious  knowledge  in  particular.  Any  fundamental  dis- 
trust of  the  former  involves  doubt  in  regard  to  the  latter. 
This  is  true,  it  may  be  said,  but  is  a  discussion  on  the 
nature  of  knowledge  likely  to  help  us  forward  ?  Some 
have  argued  that  any  attempt  to  defend  the  validity  of 
our  mental  processes  is  superfluous ;  even  in  the  act  of 
defending  we  are  assuming  what  we  set  out  to  prove. 
For  the  defence  is  itself  a  mental  process  presumed  to  be 
valid.  Hegel  wittily  compared  the  man  who  refused  to 
trust  his  mental  faculties  till  he  had  proved  their  reliability 
to  Scholasticus,  who  declined  to  enter  the  water  until  he 
had  learned  to  swim.  To  those  who  argue  that  they  are 
only  trying  to  define  the  limits  of  knowledge,  the  rejoinder 
is  ready,  that  to  define  a  limit  means  that  you  have  already 
transcended  it.  You  cannot  mark  out  a  boundary  without 
seeing  beyond  it.  We  do  not  dispute  that  there  are 
elements  of  truth  in  these  contentions.  But  they  neither 
prove  knowledge  to  be  absolute  nor  an  epistemological 
inquiry  to  be  useless.  If  knowledge  and  reality  are  not 
identical,  then  an  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  knowledge 
is  a  proper  preliminary  to  the  more  fundamental  problems 
of  metaphysics.  Such  an  inquiry  is  the  legitimate  outcome 
of  the  psychology  of  mental  process.  The  result  of  a 
criticism  of  knowledge  should  bring  out  the  relation  in 
which  knowledge  stands  to  reality,  and  the  degree  of  justice 
which  attaches  to  the  human  claim  to  truth.  But  the 


THEORIES   OF   KNOWLEDGE  273 

boundaries  of  the  province  of  epistemology  are  not  rigidly 
drawn,  for  it  merges  insensibly  into  psychology  on  the 
one  hand  and  into  metaphysics  on  the  other.  We  may 
conveniently  approach  our  task  from  the  historical  side 
and  begin  by  considering 

A. — THEORIES  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Every  theory  of  knowledge  sets  out  from  experience, 
and  seeks  to  explain  the  knowing  process  revealed  there. 
And  if  experience  is  the  foundation,  it  is  also  the  test  of 
theory.  In  this  case  it  has  been  common  to  begin  with 
an  analysis  of  experience  in  its  fully  developed  forms,  and 
to  show  what  are  the  implications  of  that  experience. 
Certain  broad  facts  are  admitted  by  all  who  deal  with 
the  subject.  Every  one  agrees,  for  example,  that  experience 
implies  a  subject  which  knows  and  an  object  which  is 
known,  and  the  two  are  intimately  related  the  one  to 
the  other.  But  when  we  come  to  investigate  the  meaning 
of  this  relationship  the  theorists  part  company,  and  draw 
different  deductions  from  the  facts  before  them.  On  the 
one  hand  it  is  said  that  the  object  involves  data  which 
are  independent  of  the  knowing  process,  data  which  are 
given  to  the  mind  and  determine  the  content  of  knowledge 
in  the  mind.  On  the  other  hand  it  is  urged  that  the 
content  of  knowledge  is  a  mental  content  entirely :  it  is 
the  embodiment  of  mental  activity,  and  so-called  data  are 
only  data  because  they  are  experienced  facts.  There  is 
no  way  outside  the  circle  of  experience,  and  from  a  reality 
supposed  to  transcend  experience  there  is  no  way  to  pass 
within  it.  We  may,  however,  refuse  to  commit  ourselves 
to  either  of  these  views  and  look  for  some  via  media. 
Instead  of  setting  out  from  one  side  of  the  contrast  of 
subject  and  object,  we  may  accept  the  relationship,  and 
proceed  by  critical  analysis  to  determine  what  is  implied 
by  it.  Let  us  briefly  consider  these  different  standpoints. 


274  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

(a)  The  Empirical  and  Realistic  Theory. 

This  theory  lays  stress  on  the  idea  that  knowledge 
depends  on  data  which  are  found  by  the  mind,  not  made ; 
and  these  data,  it  is  suggested,  are  not  only  the  occasions 
of  knowing,  but  the  cause  of  knowledge.  The  data  them- 
selves, through  the  continued  process  of  experiencing  them, 
impress  themselves  upon  the  mind,  and  gradually  bring 
about  in  the  mind  fixed  responses  or  ways  of  dealing  with 
them.  The  evolutionary  empiricist  would  compare  this 
process  to  the  manner  in  which  the  environment  gradually 
impresses  itself  on  the  structure  of  an  organism.  The 
realistic  empiricist  further  points  out  how  impossible  it 
is  to  suppose  the  subject  evolves  the  content  of  its  world 
from  its  own  internal  resources.  Rather  does  the  world 
force  itself  on  us,  and  we  have  to  accept  it.  One  can  often 
detect  underlying  this  line  of  argument  the  naive  assumption 
that  the  senses  are,  not  ways  in  which  we  experience, 
but  gateways  through  which  experience  comes  to  us  from 
without.  People  speak  loosely  of  knowledge  always  coming 
through  the  channels  of  sense,  and  by  a  further  confusion 
the  channel  becomes  the  source.  Nihil  est  in  intellectu 
quod  non  fuerit  in  sensu :  so  we  have  the  conception  of 
mind  as  a  kind  of  empty  chamber  that  is  made  the  store- 
house of  experiences  which  are  somehow  converted  into 
knowledge.  What  apparently  lends  strength  to  this 
argument  is  the  undoubted  fact,  that  without  experience 
there  can  be  no  knowledge  whatsoever,  and  the  old  theory 
that  the  mind  is  possessed  of  certain  '  innate  ideas '  will . 
not  bear  close  examination.  Knowledge  is  undoubtedly 
the  fruit  of  experience,  and  neither  the  philosopher  nor 
the  plain  man  will  come  to  anything  without  experience. 
None  the  less  the  radical  and  consistent  empiricist  who* 
traces  all  knowledge  to  a  source  in  sense-impressions  is 
advocating  an  impracticable  theory.  Whenever  we  raise 
the  question  in  its  general  form,  whenever  we  ask,  with 
Kant,  how  experience  itself  is  possible,  it  becomes  apparent 
that  the  mind  has  a  functional  activity  of  its  own  which 


THEORIES    OF   KNOWLEDGE  275 

it  actualises  in  the  process  of  experiencing.  For  knowledge 
is  always  stated  in '  terms  of  mind,  and  is  impossible  apart 
from  the  activity  of  the  knowing  subject.  Thinkers  like 
Locke  and  Hume,  who  are  usually  reckoned  empiricists, 
do  not  regard  the  problem  from  this  general  point  of  view. 
They  ask  what  experience  is,  and,  by  an  analysis  largely 
psychological,  are  content  to  describe  how  it  develops  in 
the  individual  mind.  Yet  both  really  assume  there  is 
more  in  the  nature  of  mind  than  pure  empiricism  can 
explain.  For  instance,  to  take  the  case  of  Locke,  he  will 
be  found  attributing  to  the  intellect  a  power  of  combining, 
distinguishing,  and  comparing  ideas,  a  thing  impossible  if 
we  are  to  suppose  the  'simple  ideas'  which  are  the 
material  of  knowledge  are  also  its  cause  and  explanation. 
The  mind  is  here  credited  with  powers  of  analysis  and 
synthesis  which  develop  knowledge.  Moreover,  for  a  con- 
sistent empiricism  real  propositions — propositions  which 
refer  to  concrete  existents — can  never  have  more  than  a 
problematical  truth,  there  is  nothing  to  endow  them  with 
the  character  of  universality  and  necessity.  Yet  Locke  is 
led  to  assert  that  the  existence  of  God  is  a  demonstrable 
and  a  necessary  fact,  and  has  the  certainty  of  a  mathe- 
matical conclusion. 

The  motives  which  influenced  Locke  to  this  conclusion 
are  intelligible,  but  Hume  was  here  truer  to  the  empiri- 
cal standpoint ;  for  he  saw  that  mere  experience,  while  it 
can  create  strong  belief,  can  never  generate  a  necessary 
connexion.  Regarding  empiricism  in  its  bearing  on 
religion,  we  affirm,  if  it  is  thoroughgoing,  it  cannot  meet  the 
demands  of  the  religious  consciousness.  For  the  object  of 
the  religious  consciousness  is  a  concrete  reality  which 
exists  beyond  and  independent  of  its  realisation  in  human 
experience.  Such  a  spiritual  Reality  lies  beyond  all 
presentations  of  sense.  Neither  through  outer  nor  inner 
experience  can  we  reach  the  idea  of  God  directly  and  apart 
from  inference.  Even  the  witness  of  God  in  spiritual  life 
involves  a  movement  of  faith  beyond  what  is  given.  But 
if  bare  experience  is  the  source  and  measure  of  knowledge, 


276  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

we  cannot  go  beyond  it.  Tried  by  this  rigid  test  the  God 
of  the  religious  consciousness  would  be  justified  neither  by 
logical  inferences  nor  by  ethical  postulates.  Agnosticism 
would  be  the  consequence,  for  on  this  showing  religious  belief 
denotes  the  unverified  and  the  unverifiable.  No  doubt  a 
great  many  other  beliefs  which  people  are  not  wont  to 
question  would  fall  to  be  discarded  likewise,  for  faith  enters 
deeply  into  human  life.  And  this  suggests  that  pure 
empiricism  is  founded  on  a  basis  too  narrow,  and  puts 
forward  a  criterion  which  is  impossible. 

The  great  fault  of  thoroughgoing  empiricism  is  its 
defective  conception  of  what  experience  really  means.  It 
has  been  misled  by  the  old  prejudice  in  favour  of  the  view 
that  the  mind  is  passive,  or  mainly  passive,  in  the  act  of 
experiencing.  If  you  proceed  on  this  wrong  assumption, 
the  universality  of  what  are  called  the  '  laws  of  thought ' 
must  remain  unintelligible,  and  the  true  character  of  the 
mind  will  be  misunderstood.  The  knowing  mind  can 
never  be  the  creation  of  the  data  of  experience,  and  no 
realistic  theory  of  evolution  can  give  even  a  plausible 
account  of  its  development.  Material  causes  can  only 
have  material  effects,  and  no  physiological  process  can 
generate  a  mental  process.  Empiricism,  we  hasten  to  add, 
is  not  necessarily  materialism  ;  but  none  the  less  consistent 
empiricism  fails  to  recognise  the  active  and  constitutive 
function  of  the  knowing  mind.  Knowledge  as  such  is 
never  impressed  on  us  from  without ;  it  is  always  a 
development  from  within.  The  so-called  data  of  knowledge 
have  meaning  and  value  only  through  the  selection  and  ideal 
construction  exercised  upon  them  by  the  mind  itself.  A 
pure  datum,  or  a  pure  experience,  is  a  fiction,  for  nothing 
corresponds  to  it  in  the  nature  of  things.  At  every  level 
of  consciousness  the  active  and  experient  subject  or  centre 
of  experience  makes  the  experience  possible.  The  truth  is 
that  merely  empirical  contents  do  not  exist :  every  content 
from  the  first  is  qualified  by  the  presence  and  activity  of 
the  subject  whose  content  it  is.  If  this  be  so,  it  is  plain 
that  by  following  the  empirical  route  we  have  arrived  at 


THEORIES   OF   KNOWLEDGE  277 

an  impasse,  and  further  progress  seems  impossible.  We 
have  now  to  find  out  whether  we  can  come  closer  to  a 
solution  of  the  problem  by  approaching  it  from  the  other 
side. 

(b)  Rational  and  a  Priori. 

The  Eationalistic  theory,  to  adopt  a  convenient  if  some- 
what loose  term,  regards  the  problem  from  a  different 
standpoint,  and  treats  it  by  an  opposite  method  to  the 
Empirical.  Knowledge,  it  maintains,  cannot  be  understood 
as  a  mass  of  empirical  generalisations  from  data  in  some 
manner  given  to  the  mind.  Rather  must  we  find  its 
ground  and  explanation  in  those  rational  concepts  and 
universal  ideas  which  the  mind  uses  in  the  process  of 
knowing.  These  ideas  are  not  fashioned  by  the  individual, 
nor  are  they  gradually  elaborated  by  the  race  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  concrete  situation  :  they  are  real  in  themselves, 
and  they  are  a  priori  in  the  sense  that  experience  pre- 
supposes them.  These  universal  forms  or  ideas,  we  are 
told,  constitute  the  very  nature  of  the  knowing  subject, 
or,  as  others  have  maintained,  they  are  apprehended  and 
necessarily  used  by  the  mind.  In  either  case,  knowledge  is 
determined  from  the  side  of  the  subject,  and  is  made 
possible  by  the  mind's  activity.  Long  ago,  Plato  gave 
decisive  prominence  to  this  theory,  and  sought  by  means 
of  it  to  solve  the  problem  of  predication.1  The  ei&r)  or 
ideal  forms  were  for  him  the  laws  or  determining  principles 
which  moulded  experience  and  endowed  it  with  meaning 
and  value.  Knowledge  was  not  developed  from  beneath, 
but  fashioned  from  above  by  the  realm  of  ideas.  Significant 
predication  depended  upon  them,  and  apart  from  them  it 
was  not  possible  to  know  anything ;  even  seemingly  solid 
matter  in  abstraction  from  form  became  a  mere  shadowy 
existence,  a  firj  ov.  Aristotle,  although  he  protests 

1  I  put  the  matter  thus,  for  it  is  possible  that  Plato  was  not  the  absolute 
originator  of  the  ideal  theory.  That  the  tidy  were  much  discussed  in  con- 
temporary philosophic  circles  is  proved  by  the  Parmenides,  which  is  not 
merely  the  criticism  of  his  own  earlier  doctrines  on  Plato's  part. 


278  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

vigorously  against  what  he  takes  to  be  the  Platonic  separa- 
tion of  the  '  forms '  from  individual  objects,  in  substance 
repeats  the  message  of  Plato.  For  him,  too,  the  form  or 
eZ£o<?  is  the  essence  of  the  individual,  and  if  we  abstract  all 
forms  from  material  objects  there  only  remains  an  elusive 
v\rj.  The  rationalistic  tradition  was  maintained  by  the 
Schoolmen,  and  was  represented  in  its  extreme  phase  by 
those  who  opposed  to  the  nominalists  the  doctrine  of 
universalia  ante  res.  When  we  come  to  modern  philosophy, 
Descartes,  Spinoza,  and  Leibniz  must  all  be  taken  to  support 
the  rationalistic  view  of  experience.  A  doctrine  common 
to  all  these  thinkers  is,  that  knowledge  is  not  impressed 
on  the  mind  by  real  objects  which  act  upon  it  from 
the  outside.  The  mind  is  a  closed  sphere  to  external 
impressions,  and  thought  moves  within  its  own  order. 
Descartes  denied  all  interaction  between  thought  and 
things.  Ideas,  taken  in  the  sense  of  states  of  conscious- 
ness, constitute  for  him  the  only  order  of  experience  we 
know :  changes  in  external  nature  accompany  our  changing 
ideas,  but  they  neither  create  them  nor  result  from  them. 
The  same  conclusion  is  contained  in  Spinoza's  conception 
of  the  parallelism  of  thought  and  extension.  The  rational 
concatenation  of  ideas  or  concepts  makes  the  process  of 
knowledge,  and  this  process  is  a  series  complete  in  itself. 
The  extended  order  of  things  merely  corresponds  to  the 
internal.1  The  system  of  Leibniz  is  in  many  respects  the 
polar  opposite  of  Spinoza's :  yet  Leibniz  is  quite  at  one 
with  Spinoza  in  holding  that  knowledge  is  an  internally 
articulated  whole.  The  full  wealth  of  its  knowledge  is 
developed  by  each  monad  from  within,  and  is  not  due  to 
any  communication  from  without. 

From  the  rationalistic  theory  of  knowledge  certain 
theological  inferences  have  been  drawn.  The  ideas  of 
Plato  were  found  to  lead  up  to  and  receive  their  place  and 
value  through  a  Supreme  Idea,  the  Idea  of  the  Good ;  and 
this  he  certainly  seems  at  times  to  identify  with  God.2 

1 "  Ordo  et  coniiexio  idearum  idem  est  ac  ordo  et  connexio  rerum,"  Eth.  ii.  7. 
8  Vid.  Rep.  vi  508. 


THEORIES   OF    KNOWLEDGE  279 

Similarly  the  forms  of  Aristotle  culminated  in  a  perfect 
form,  free  of  material  taint,  and  pure  spirit  or  God,  who 
transcends  the  world  but  moves  it  as  object  of  desire. 
Descartes,  again,  found  that  God  was  necessary  to  guarantee 
the  truth  of  our  ideas  of  external  nature,  and  Spinoza 
postulated  substance  or  God  to  embrace  in  one  whole  the 
double  orders  of  thought  and  extension.  Still  the  idea  of 
God  reached  in  this  way  does  not  have  the  spiritual  and 
ethical  characteristics  which  are  essential  to  the  religious 
consciousness.  If  we  invest  the  idea  with  these  qualities, 
it  cannot  be  on  the  strength  of  a  formal  argument.  More- 
over, there  are  difficulties  in  the  rationalist  doctrine  of 
knowledge  which  seriously  affect  the  certainty  of  con- 
clusions that  may  be  drawn  from  it.  It  will  be  worth 
while  indicating  what  these  difficulties  are. 

Undoubtedly  rationalists,  from  Plato  downwards,  have 
exaggerated  the  importance  of  the  purely  formal  element 
in  knowledge.  After  all,  the  form  is  only  one  factor  in 
knowing.  It  is  impossible  to  see  how  the  individual 
differences  and  the  specific  qualities  of  concrete  objects  of 
experience  can  be  explained  by  the  general  form  of  thought. 
Keason  must  have  something  to  rationalise,  and  thought 
must  have  data  upon  which  to  exercise  its  analytic  and 
synthetic  activity  ;  and  these  data  can  never  be  reduced 
to  general  conceptions.  Otherwise  you  have  only  the 
general  idea  of  an  object,  not  the  concrete  and  individual 
thing.  Eationalism  in  its  historic  forms  has  set  out  from 
highly  developed  experience  where  thought  has  undoubtedly 
played  an  important  part.  But  recognising  and  accentu- 
ating the  value  of  this  thought-activity,  the  rationalist  has 
forgotten  the  lower  stages  of  experience  which  prepared 
the  way  for  it.  On  a  wider  view  experience  is  seen  to  be 
larger  than  thought,  in  fact  to  be  coextensive  with  life. 
Feeling  and  conative  factors  enter  deeply  into  it,  and 
through  all  its  lower  stages  they  predominate  ;  and  it  is 
on  the  basis  supplied  by  them  that  thinking  consciousness 
develops.  The  knowing  self  is  never  the  whole  self.  The 
act  of  knowledge  always  refers  beyond  itself,  and  thought 


280  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

is  constantly  dependent  on  volitional  and  feeling  elements. 
Keason  as  it  is  revealed  in  the  knowing  process  is  only  one 
aspect  of  experience,  and  knowledge  could  not  exist  in 
abstraction  from  other  elements.  The  defects  of  dogmatic 
rationalism  and  empiricism  suggested  the  propriety  of 
Criticism. 

(c)   The  Critical  Theory. 

Contrasted  with  Empiricism  and  Rationalism,  Criticism 
deals  with  the  problem  of  knowledge  in  a  more  careful 
and  a  less  onesided  fashion.  It  does  not  set  out  to 
explain  knowledge  either  from  the  real  or  the  ideal  side, 
but  by  an  analysis  of  concrete  experience  strives  to 
ascertain  how  knowledge  is  possible  and  what  is  implied 
in  it.  What  is  presupposed  by  the  fact  that  knowing 
minds  are  confronted  with  that  connected  order  of  things 
which  is  the  experienced  world  ?  Kant's  theory  of 
knowledge  is  the  great  example  of  the  critical  method, 
and  I  have  it  in  view  in  these  remarks.  The  theory  itself 
I  will  not  attempt  to  reproduce  in  detail,  but  will  assume 
some  acquaintance  with  it  on  the  part  of  the  reader. 
Briefly  put,  Kant's  analysis  shows  that  knowledge  implies 
a  material  and  a  formal  factor:  both  are  necessary,  and 
neither  is  reducible  to  terms  of  the  other.  Matter  of 
sense  must  be  given,  but  forms  of  perception  and  con- 
ception are  involved  in  the  mind's  representation  of  a 
world  of  objects.  Kant  once  and  for  all  made  clear  that 
the  activity  of  the  knowing  subject  is  necessary  to  the 
existence  of  knowledge :  the  organisation  of  experience  in 
a  coherent  whole  is  a  process  which  essentially  depends  on 
the  unity  and  activity  of  self-consciousness.  Kant,  however, 
does  not  find  that  the  mind,  in  virtue  of  experience,  can 
develop  and  modify  the  forms  through  which  it  constitutes 
its  represented  world.  And  he  tends  to  narrow  down  the 
question  of  the  possibility  of  experience  to  that  of  the 
explanation  and  justification  of  the  scientific  consciousness. 
Hence  he  has  a  limited  and  specific  type  of  experience 
mainly  in  view.  By  thus  restricting  the  scope  of  his 


THEORIES   OF   KNOWLEDGE  281 

problem,  Kant  failed  to  give  it  the  necessary  largeness  of 
treatment,  for  this  can  only  be  gained  by  taking  the 
scientific  consciousness  as  part  of  a  wider  experience.  But 
putting  the  problem  in  the  way  he  did,  he  concluded  that 
the  perceptive  forms  of  space  and  time,  and  twelve 
categories  or  forms  of  judgment,  are  a  priori  elements : 
they  are  a  priori  in  the  sense  that  they  are  necessarily 
involved  in  the  '  transcendental  unity  of  apperception/  in 
the  mind's  consciousness  of  itself  in  relation  to  an  orderly 
world  of  represented  objects.  If  in  spirit  Kant  desired  to 
think  things  together,  his  actual  method  was  to  bring  forward 
the  elements  of  knowledge  each  by  itself  and  sharply 
marked  oft'  from  the  rest,  a  procedure  alien  to  the  principle 
of  organic  growth.  Lacking  the  notion  of  a  historic 
growth  of  experience,  he  thought  to  tabulate  fully  the 
a  priori  concepts  of  the  mind  in  his  apostolic  group  of 
twelve  categories,  and  so  gave  his  theory  an  artificial  and 
a  false  completeness.  Another  consequence  followed.  If, 
as  Kant  believed,  the  a  priori  forms  are  the  only  forms 
through  which  a  valid  knowledge  is  possible,  then  any 
assumed  knowledge  which  transcends  these  forms  must  be 
invalid.  Hence,  when  we  go  beyond  the  understanding 
with  its  schematised  categories,  and  seek  rational  complete- 
ness in  experience ;  when  we  endeavour  to  rise  to  the  idea 
of  a  systematic  whole  which  embraces  knower  and  known ; 
when  we  try  to  conceive  a  soul  or  self  which  has  a  reality 
apart  from  the  specific  forms  in  which  it  knows :  in  each 
case  we  have  ceased  to  know,  and  fall  into  hopeless  contra- 
dictions. So  the  Kantian  philosophy  secures  the  validity 
of  knowledge  by  severely  restricting  its  scope.  From  this 
limitation  results  significant  for  religion  flowed,  and  these 
were  carefully  pointed  out  by  Kant.  Theoretical  knowledge 
of  God,  freedom,  and  immortality  we  could  not  have,  for 
these  ideas  all  lay  beyond  the  field  in  which  valid 
knowledge  was  realised.  Yet  as  little  could  science  dis- 
prove them,  for  it  overstepped  its  lawful  bounds  in  trying 
so  to  do.  Kant  was  not  an  agnostic,  and  he  thought  he 
was  doing  religion  a  service  in  showing  it  dealt  with  things 


282  THE   NATURE   OF    KNOWLEDGE 

which  are  theoretically  unknowable.  For  Kant,  religion  was 
purely  matter  of  faith,  which  begins  where  scientific  know- 
ing ends  ;  and  faith  he  curiously  supposed  is  knowledge  in 
a  practical  regard.  The  will,  or  practical  reason  as  he 
terms  it,  in  its  activity  is  forced  to  make  certain  practical 
presuppositions  or  postulates,  and  these  postulates  or 
necessary  practical  demands  turn  out  to  be  just  the  ideas 
which  pure  reason  put  forward,  but  theoretical  criticism 
showed  to  be  illegitimate.  It  was  a  dubious  benefit  to 
religion  to  show  that  its  claims  to  know  were  untenable  in 
theory  though  justifiable  in  practice.  Kant's  solution  of 
the  religious  problem  simply  amounts  to  a  clear  delimita- 
tion of  spheres :  the  will  in  its  province  legitimately 
postulates  what  the  theoretical  reason  legitimately  denies. 
But  we  cannot  admit  that  theoretical  and  practical  reason 
are  distinguished  and  contrasted  in  this  way ;  and  faith 
and  knowledge  are  not  separated  as  Kant  supposed. 
Kant's  work  was  extraordinarily  fruitful  and  rich  in 
suggestion  ;  yet  taken  as  a  whole  we  cannot  accept  it, 
and  this  largely  because  he  approached  the  problem  of 
knowledge  with  preconceptions  which  are  now  seen  to  be 
inadmissible.  In  his  general  conception  of  the  function 
of  criticism,  Kant  was  right.  The  successful  method  of 
handling  the  problem  of  knowledge  is  not  by  dogmatic 
assumptions,  but  by  a  critical  study  of  the  process  itself. 
Nevertheless  the  scope  of  the  inquiry  must  be  wider  than 
Kant  believed.  A  theory  of  knowledge  cannot  be  adequate, 
if  it  takes  no  account  of  psychological,  social,  and  historic 
development.  Some  evidence  for  the  latter  statement  will 
be  found  in  the  following  section. 

R — THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

It  became  increasingly  plain  during  last  century  that 
the  problem  of  knowledge,  like  the  problems  of  biology 
and  sociology,  must  be  treated  from  the  standpoint  of 
development.  To  begin  like  Descartes  wifch  fully  developed 
self-consciousness,  and  go  on  to  ask  what  is  implied  by  it, 


THE   DEVELOPMENT   OF   KNOWLEDGE  283 

is  to  reverse  the  right  order  of  procedure.  For  full-fledged 
personality  presupposes  a  long  course  of  biological  and 
social  evolution.  The  sharp  contrast  of  subject  and  object, 
and  the  clear  differentiation  of  outer  and  inner  experience, 
are  not  facts  which  were  given  from  the  first.  Human 
experience  has  various  stages,  and  experience  itself  is 
wider  than  its  human  form.  When  we  trace  experience 
backward  the  plain  distinctions  drawn  by  the  developed 
mind  are  gradually  obliterated,  and  sensation,  perception, 
and  thought  become  merged  in  a  continuum  of  feeling. 
The  conscious  recognition  of  sensation  as  such  is  relatively 
late,  and  going  downward  we  reach  a  point  where  subject 
and  object  are  not  distinguished,  and  experience  is  no 
more  than  the  awareness  of  a  content  which  is  quite 
indefinite.  There  is  no  warrant  for  the  idea  that  ex- 
perience begins  with  a  manifold  of  sensations :  the  notion 
that  the  primitive  data  of  experience  are  a  multitude  of 
isolated  sense-impressions  is  a  fiction  whose  currency  was 
greatly  due  to  Hume.  The  truth  rather  is  that  experience 
begins  with  a  feeling-continuum  in  which  differences  are 
submerged.  From  such  an  elementary  or  low-grade  ex- 
perience progress  ensues  by  a  process  of  differentiation ; 
and  the  gradual  recognition  of  differences  within  the 
whole,  on  the  part  of  the  experient,  means  the  gradual 
increase  in  clearness  of  consciousness.  The  more  ex- 
perience tends  to  a  monotonous  uniformity,  the  lower 
does  the  light  of  consciousness  sink ;  and  it  is  in  and 
through  the  diversities  of  its  content,  that  the  self  comes 
to  know  itself  as  a  centre  of  interest  and  activity.  Progress 
lies  in  the  steady  and  increasing  definition  of  the  subject 
over  against  the  environment  or  object ;  and  this  signifies 
the  grouping  together  of  a  body  of  feeling-experiences 
which  are  referred  directly  to  the  self,  and  contrasted  with 
those  which  are  referred  to  the  not-self. 

It  is  not  of  importance  for  our  purpose  to  discuss  the 
details  of  this  differentiating  process,  but  it  is  necessary  to 
insist  on  the  prominent  place  and  function  of  conation. 
Only  when  we  recognise  the  central  part  played  by  conation, 


284  THE   NATURE   OF    KNOWLEDGE 

do  we  realise  the  connexion  of  the  biological  and  the 
psychological  sides  of  knowledge.  The  cognitive  interest, 
it  has  been  said,  is  immediately  rooted  in  the  biological 
interest,  that  is  to  say  in  the  tendency  which  pervades 
each  individual  life  to  realise  and  maintain  itself.1  The 
will  to  know  grows  out  of  and,  in  the  first  instance,  sub- 
serves the  will  to  live,  while  the  latter  involves  a  constant 
selective  activity  exercised  in  the  processes  of  appetition  and 
aversion.  Conation  is  here  fundamental,  and  the  organism 
only  survives  because  it  reacts  selectively  on  its  environ- 
ment in  ways  which  conserve  its  life.  Through  all  the 
stages  of  experience,  from  rudimentary  instinct  to  reflective 
thinking,  there  runs  a  purposive  activity ;  and  the  value 
which  objects  receive  in  relation  to  that  activity  gives 
them  their  place  in  experience.  Intellection  continues 
and  raises  to  a  higher  level  the  selective  process  already 
exhibited  in  instinct,  and  the  first  function  of  intelligence 
is  to  read  meaning  into  experience,  so  that  experience  can 
be  turned  to  account  in  the  attainment  of  proximate  ends.2 
There  are  no  breaks  in  the  evolution  of  knowledge :  one 
stage  passes  insensibly  into  another,  and  what  comes  after 
is  prepared  for  by  what  has  gone  before.  At  the  lowest 
level  is  the  mere  feeling  of  awareness,  which  is,  however, 
only  possible  through  the  presence  of  conation.  This 
conative  activity,  working  in  the  form  of  selective  interest, 
is  the  condition  of  that  further  organisation  of  experience 
which  is  manifested  in  sense-perception.  At  the  perceptual 
stage  there  is  still  no  distinction  of  the  sense-presentations 
from  objects :  to  the  perceptual  consciousness  the  presenta- 
tions are  themselves  the  objects.  In  perception,  however, 
a  process  is  already  immanent  which  eventually  transforms 
experience,  and  gives  us  our  human  world  as  we  know  it. 

1  H.  Maier,  Psychologic  des  Emotionalen  Denkens,  p.  158.     The  biological 
factor  in  knowledge  has  received  much  attention  in  recent  years.     It  may 
suffice  in  this  connexion  to  mention  Simmel  and  Jerusalem,  Bergson  from 
his  own  point  of  view,  and,  among  English  writers,  Professor  J.  Ward  and 
L.  T.  Hobhouse. 

2  Cp.  Hobhouse,  Mind  in  Evolution,  p.  270. 


THE   DEVELOPMENT   OF    KNOWLEDGE  285 

Eepetition  leads  to  recognition,  which  is  based  on  memory ; 
and  through  repetition  the  mind  develops  associations, 
universalises,  and  rises  to  the  apprehension  of  meaning. 
This  investment  of  the  elements  of  experience  with  meaning 
is  the  condition  of  learning,  and  it  is  the  special  prerogative 
of  man.  In  man  the  great  development  of  the  memory 
and  association  areas  in  the  brain  form  the  physiological 
basis  for  those  processes  of  conceptual  thinking  which  are 
his  peculiar  characteristic.  Thought  purposively  directed 
upon  the  complex  of  perception  works  it  up  by  analysis 
and  synthesis,  and  defines  for  us  an  orderly  and  related 
world  of  things.  The  scientific  consciousness  is  the  ripe 
fruit  of  conceptual  thinking.  Kant's  great  mistake — a 
mistake  natural  to  his  age — was  to  regard  mind  as  from 
the  first  a  fixed  organisation  of  categories ;  for  the  con- 
ceptual process  is  essentially  a  development  which  implies 
social  organisation  and  the  growth  of  social  experience. 
The  instrument  of  conceptual  thought  is  language. 
Language  fixes  the  concept  in  the  significant  sound  or 
word,  and  thus  makes  it  generally  available.  In  its  origin, 
purpose,  and  growth,  language  is  conspicuously  a  social 
product ;  it  evolves  by  means  of  intersubjective  intercourse, 
the  interaction  of  mind  with  mind.  Speech,  indeed,  is  not 
possible  without  thought,  but  just  as  little  is  thought 
possible  apart  from  speech :  the  one  implies  the  other  and 
both  develop  together.  This  proves  beyond  cavil  that  we 
ought  not  to  treat  the  problem  of  knowledge  from  a  merely 
individual  standpoint.  "  Any  treatment  of  thought  which 
abstracts  from  the  characteristic  of  community,  from  the 
social  nature  which  man  shows  here  as  everywhere,  must 
be  onesided  and  untrue."1  If  we  are  asked,  then,  how 
the  individual  mind  comes  to  know  objects,  we  reply  that 
the  more  relevant  inquiry  is,  how  does  the  individual  mind 
develop  so  as  to  be  capable  of  knowing  objects.  Not  by 
itself  certainly,  but  as  member  of  society  and  heir  to  a 
social  heritage.  The  system  of  concepts  by  means  of 
which  man  organises  his  knowledge  is  the  outcome  of  a 
1  Sigwart,  Logic,  vol.  ii.  p.  6,  Eng.  tr. 


286  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

long  social  development,  and  is  thus  placed  at  the  disposal 
of  individuals.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  conceptual 
and  socialised  thinking  lies  behind  what,  at  first  blush, 
might  seem  a  primitive  fact  of  experience,  the  distinction 
of  an  outer  and  an  inner  world.  For  conceptual  thought 
is  needed  to  fix  and  generalise  the  idea  of  an  external 
world,  and  we  only  find  our  internal  world,  so  to  speak, 
by  defining  it  over  against  the  external  world.  This  is 
really  a  developed  way  of  construing  experience  which 
social  evolution  has  helped  to  make  possible.  Hence  the 
remark  of  Professor  Royce  is  perfectly  true :  "  A  child 
never  gets  his  belief  in  our  present  objective  world  till  he 
has  first  got  his  social  consciousness."  It  is  important  to 
insist  that  the  conceptual  process,  by  which  man  universal- 
ises  his  experience  and  sets  before  him  the  general  con- 
ception of  an  external  world,  is  likewise  the  means  by 
which  he  develops  his  awareness  of  self  as  a  centre  of 
feeling  into  the  notion  of  a  self-contained  sphere  of  inward 
experience.  Inner  and  outer  experience  develop  pari  passu, 
and  the  enlargement  of  our  knowledge  of  things  is  also  an 
enlargement  of  our  inner  life.  This  twofold  expansion  of 
knowledge  has  its  ground  in  the  growth  of  selves  inter- 
acting with  one  another  in  a  social  system.  We  shall 
merely  fall  into  confusion  if  we  assume  that  the  contrast 
of  inner  and  outer  is  an  ultimate  and  primitive  datum  of 
experience. 

We  conclude  that  the  evolution  of  knowledge  issues 
out  of  the  wider  evolution  of  experience,  and  is  its  maturest 
fruit.  The  active  centre  of  experience,  which  has  merely 
a  feeling-awareness  of  content,  is  continuous  in  the  line  of 
development  with  the  subject  of  conceptual  or  universal 
experience  which  sets  the  world  of  known  objects  over 
against  the  world  of  knowing  selves.  In  this  way,  by 
following  the  developmental  method,  we  can,  it  is  suggested, 
do  away  with  the  dualism  of  subject  and  object  that 
threatens  us  if  we  begin  with  an  analysis  of  the  completed 
result  of  the  process.  Originally  sense-presentations  were 
the  objects  themselves,  and  in  the  presentation  subject  and 


PRESUPPOSITIONS   OF   KNOWLEDGE  287 

object  were  identical :  if  we  suppose  they  were  different 
from  the  first,  then,  it  is  argued,  there  is  no  way  of  passing 
from  the  one  to  the  other.  But  if  we  start  from  the 
primitive  unity  of  thought  and  being,  the  contrast  which 
by  and  by  emerges  between  the  presentation  and  the  object, 
between  the  appearance  and  the  reality,  reduces  itself  to  a 
difference  within  knowledge,  to  the  difference  between 
perceptual  and  conceptual  knowing.  The  defining  and 
generalising  movement  of  the  conceptual  consciousness,  in 
giving  fixity  to  the  idea  of  the  object  seems  to  endow  it 
with  a  permanent  being  of  its  own.1  To  discuss  this  view 
adequately  would  carry  us  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present 
discussion.  Something  will  be  said  on  the  point  after- 
wards ;  in  the  meantime  it  will  suffice  to  warn  the  reader 
that  the  conclusion  suggested  above  does  not  necessarily 
follow.  Conceptual  knowledge  can  make  explicit  differences 
which  were  implicit  in  the  original  presentation-continuum, 
but  it  has  not  been  shown  that  it  can  evolve  distinctions 
which  have  no  ground  in  the  nature  of  reality.  Differences, 
though  submerged  at  the  rudimentary  stage,  are  not  thereby 
obliterated.  And  in  regard  to  the  ultimate  difference 
which  finally  takes  form  in  the  contrast  of  subject  and 
object,  it  is  not  enough  to  posit  an  original  identity  on  the 
plea  that  otherwise  knowledge  is  impossible.  For  this  has 
to  be  proved. 

C. — THE  PRESUPPOSITIONS  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Having  indicated  what  we  take  to  be  the  broad  lines 
on  which  knowledge  evolves,  we  have  still  to  ask  what  the 
process  presupposes.  What  is  implied  in  the  fact  that 
the  mind  knows  a  world  of  objects,  and  finds  its  knowledge 
practically  valuable  ?  If  the  knower  and  the  known  can- 
not be  reduced  to  an  identity;  if  the  knowledge  of  the 
object  does  not  constitute  the  existence  of  the  object ;  then 
it  must  follow  that  there  is  interaction  between  the  knower 

1  This  is  Wundt's  theory.     Vid.  System  der  Philosophic,  1889,  p.  90  ff. 
Cf.  Konig's  Wundt  ah  Psy dialog  und  als  Philosoph,  1902,  pp.  60-62. 


288  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

and  the  known,  and  the  object  which  is  given  in  knowledge 
is  the  fruit  of  that  interaction.  Now  commerce  of  this 
kind  is  not  possible  unless  there  is  an  inner  adaptation  or 
harmony  between  the  subjective  and  objective  factors  of 
this  cognitive  process.  In  virtue  of  this  adaptation,  the 
transsubjective  reality  becomes  qualified  as  a  content  of 
consciousness,  and  expresses  itself  through  presentation  to 
consciousness.  The  theory  of  knowledge,  it  seems  to  us, 
presupposes  this,  though  its  ultimate  justification,  if  it  can 
be  justified,  will  lie  with  metaphysics. 

The  further  question  arises :  What  character  or  struc- 
ture in  the  knowing  mind  does  the  knowing  process 
postulate  ?  We  have  seen  that  knowledge  cannot  be 
mechanically  impressed  on  the  subject  from  without ; 
for  the  knower  is  essentially  active  in  knowing,  and  the 
object  in  consciousness  bears  the  impress  of  that  activity. 
But  if  the  subject  is  active  in  knowing,  is  the  form  of 
his  activity  due  to  the  objects  he  cognises  ?  or  does  it 
presuppose  a  priori  principles,  or  elements  which  belong 
to  the  nature  of  mind  ?  The  cumbrous  Kantian  epis- 
temology,  with  its  apparatus  of  pure  perceptive  forms, 
of  schematic,  of  categories,  can  certainly  not  be  accepted 
as  it  stands.  Kant  neither  did  nor  could  show  that  all 
these  were  presupposed  in  the  consciousness  of  self.  Yet 
we  can  see  that  the  knowing  self  has  certain  implications, 
and  these  may  be  fairly  termed  presuppositions  of  know- 
ledge. There  are  general  conditions  which  underlie  all 
thinking,  principles  which  are  already  immanent  in  the 
earliest  development  of  thought,  laws  which  the  mind 
brings  with  it  to  all  investigation  of  experience.1  All 
thought  presupposes  the  principle  of  identity.  Sameness, 
whether  in  the  subject  or  in  the  object,  implies  identity — 
identity  which  is  contrasted  with  differences  and  is 
maintained  in  them.  A  perfectly  abstract  identity  is 
meaningless :  difference  in  some  form  is  always  necessary 
to  a  true  identity.  The  type  and  foundation  of  the  law 
of  identity  is  the  identity  of  the  self  which  persists 

1  Cf.  Sigwart ;  op.  cit.  vol.  ii.  p.  17. 


PRESUPPOSITIONS   OF   KNOWLEDGE  289 

through  its  changing  states.     An  object  which  exists  for 
itself    possesses    an    identity    which    may    be    recognised, 
but  is  not  made  by  another   mind.     Yet  identity  in  an 
object  can  only  be  known   by  us   through   that   identity 
in  ourselves  which  is  implied  in  any  exercise  of  memory. 
Only  because  we  are  conscious  of  ourselves  persisting  in 
time  can  we  be  conscious  of  the  object  persisting  in  time. 
The    reference    of    the   subject's  states   to   the   self   as  a 
sustaining   identity  is  the  condition  of    the    subject    and 
predicate    relation,  which    is   the   universal   form    of    the 
judgment.     Moreover,    while    the    principles    of    identity 
and  difference  are  at  the  basis  of  knowledge,  and  implied 
in  all  mental  activity,  our  self-consciousness  presupposes 
a    continuity  between  the   differences.     The  interest  and 
attention  necessary  to  consciousness  would  be  impossible, 
if    the   diversities   of    experience   were  not  susceptible  of 
some  kind  of  connexion.     A  perfectly  disjointed  experi- 
ence, between  the  elements  of  which  there  was  no   line 
of    transition,  would  not  be  an  experience  which  a  self- 
conscious  mind  could  recognise  as  its  own.     The  existence 
of    continuity  is   a   demand  which    the    mind    makes    on 
experience ;    and  the  presence  of    continuity  enables    the 
mind  to  arrange  its  knowledge  by  finding  similarities  and 
dissimilarities,  and  to  maintain  a  unity  of  interest  despite 
the    diversity   of    elements    amid  which    it    moves.     The 
simplest  forms  of  continuity  are  coexistence  in  space  and 
succession  in  time.     Most  important  is  the  way  in  which 
the   mind   has   developed   the   principle   of    continuity  in 
dealing  with  experience :  it  has  done  so  through  the  idea 
of  dependence,  of  logical  connexion,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes 
expressed,  by  the  idea  of  Sufficient  Eeason.     This  principle 
is  in  its  nature  a  demand  of  the  mind,  a  demand  that, 
given  certain  elements,  we    can   proceed   by  inference  to 
other    elements    which     are    implied    in    them.     Logical 
dependence  signifies  that  we  can  pass  from  one  element 
to  another  through  reference  to  an  identical  ground  which 
mediates  the  transition :  and  the  same  notion  of  an  impli- 
cation  between   elements — in  this   instance   conceived  in 


290  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

the  form  of  correspondence — lies  at  the  root  of  mathe- 
matical dependence  or  function.  In  dealing  with  experi- 
ence this  principle  of  a  connexion  between  things  is  central 
in  the  procedure  of  mind ;  and  when  there  is  an  appear- 
ance of  discontinuity  between  parts  of  our  world,  we  do 
not  take  the  appearance  for  reality ;  we  regard  it  as  setting 
the  problem  for  thought  to  show  that  a  connexion  exists. 
Of  course  in  practice  man  is  not  interested  in  trying  to 
show  connexions  everywhere :  in  this  and  in  other  matters 
he  is  guided  primarily  by  his  needs,  and  he  begins  by 
selecting  and  attending  to  those  features  in  his  world 
which  practically  concern  him.  He  is  pressed  to  under- 
stand in  the  first  instance,  in  order  to  employ  his  know- 
ledge in  the  service  of  life.  And  it  is  very  plain  that, 
if  man  did  not  find  regularity  and  connexion  among 
the  objects  in  his  environment,  he  could  not  manage  to 
survive. 

Based  on  the  logical  laws  or  postulates  of  thought, 
and  derived  from  them,  are  two  concrete  categories, — 
categories  which  we  habitually  use  in  dealing  with  things, 
though  they  owe  something  to  the  shaping  influence  of 
experience.  I  refer  to  the  conceptions  of  substance  and 
cause.  In  regard  to  the  latter,  there  can  hardly  be  room 
for  doubt  that  the  logical  principle  of  ground  and  conse- 
quence is  the  pattern  on  which  it  is  founded.1  Causality 
is  a  specific  and  more  concrete  application  of  the  general 
law  of  connexion.  Cause  and  effect  always  denote  a 
form  of  dependence,  but  not  all  dependence  is  causal :  a 
mathematical  function,  for  instance,  signifies  a  dependence, 
but  it  does  not  imply  a  causal  relation.  There  goes  with 
the  idea  of  cause  and  effect  a  definite  reference  to  time 
and  the  order  of  succession,  which  is  not  involved  in  the 
notion  of  logical  ground  and  consequence.  Moreover,  there 
is  associated  with  the  idea  of  cause  an  idea  of  dynamic 
efficiency  by  which  it  brings  about  the  result.  The 
ordinary  and  even  the  scientific  mind  are  haunted  by  the 
notion  of  a  force  or  influence  passing  from  the  cause  into 

1  Cp.  Eisler,  Einfiihrung  in  die  JErkenntnistheorie,  1907,  pp.  165-66. 


PRESUPPOSITIONS   OF   KNOWLEDGE  291 

the  effect.  Beyond  doubt  this  notion  is  the  fruit  of  man's 
experience  of  his  own  power  to  bring  about  movements  of 
his  limbs,  and  he  has  read  his  own  experience  into  the 
objects  which  surround  him,  endowing  the  natural  cause 
with  the  same  power  that  he  believes  he  recognises  in 
himself.  This  is  one  of  many  illustrations  which  show 
how  hard  it  is  for  civilised  man  to  purge  himself  of  that 
primitive  animism  which  lies  behind  the  development  of 
science  and  religion.  It  cannot,  I  think,  be  successfully 
maintained,  that  this  concrete  conception  of  the  causal 
relation  is  a  priori  in  the  sense  which  Kant  imagined. 
I  question  if  anything  more  than  continuity  in  the  relation 
of  cognised  elements  is  presupposed  in  self-conscious  ex- 
perience, or,  as  Kant  put  it,  in  the  transcendental  unity 
of  apperception.  For  surely  the  knowing  self  can  appre- 
hend a  succession  which  is  not  causally  determined  in  its 
order ;  Kant  certainly  has  not  shown  this  is  impossible,  ^ 
and  there  may  be  continuity  without  causal  connexion.  In  ' 
the  case  of  substance,  the  conception  is  ultimately  derived 
from  the  unity  of  the  self  or  subject,  which  maintains  its 
identity  in  its  different  states.  These  states  are  conceived 
to  be  the  predicates  which  qualify  the  identical  self,  the 
attributes  which  belong  to  the  subject.  Here  we  have  the 
type  after  which  man  interprets  the  things  around  him. 
Originally  these  things  were  believed  to  be  living  sub- 
stances with  qualities,  centres  of  force  with  ways  of  acting 
analogous  to  man  himself.1  By  and  by  this  naive  animism 
is  corrected,  and  over  a  great  region  of  experience  the 
conception  of  dead  matter  is  substituted  for  vital  energy. 
But  still  the  notion  of  a  thing  as  a  substratum  or  sub- 
stance in  which  qualities  inhere  survives  in  our  common 
thought,  and  constitutes  a  pattern  after  which  we  habitually 
arrange  and  group  our  experiences.  If  we  are  asked  what 
a  thing  is,  we  at  once  proceed  to  refer  to  it  certain  attri- 

1  In  a  suggestive  way,  W.  Jerusalem  has  connected  the  animistic  con- 
ception of  things  as  centres  of  force  or  activity  with  the  evolution  of  the 
subject  and  predicate  relation  in  the  judgment.  Vid.  Die  Urtheilsf unction, 
1895,  p.  91  ff. 


292        THE  NATURE  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

butes  or  modes  of  acting.  It  much  depends,  no  doubt,  on 
our  special  interest  or  purpose  what  we  regard  as  things : 
at  one  time  we  separate  between  certain  things,  and  at 
another  time,  and  for  another  purpose,  we  combine  them 
in  a  single  whole.  But  the  general  schema  of  substance 
and  attribute  is  preserved  amid  diversities  of  application, 
and  its  use  has  become  almost  an  instinct.  In  distinction 
from  the  logical  subject  and  from  the  logical  ground  or 
reason,  substance  and  cause  are  real  categories.  They  are 
not,  as  Kant  supposed,  eternally  fixed  forms  inherent  in 
the  structure  of  the  mind ;  they  have  to  some  extent  been 
shaped  by  experience,  but  have  now  hardened  into  fixed 
ways  in  which  the  mind  organises  its  world.  The  com- 
plete justification  for  their  use  cannot  be  found  on  the  side 
of  the  subject  alone :  their  use  must  be  warranted  by  the 
reality  which  is  known  as  well  as  by  the  nature  of  the 
subject  which  knows.  The  knowing  mind,  thereby  giving 
more  concrete  expression  to  the  laws  of  thought,  develops 
these  categories  in  order  to  organise  its  experience.  But 
if  there  be  transsubjective  realities,  they  cannot  be  rightly 
construed  by  any  category  which  may  be  selected  by  the 
subject.  Categories  which  are  adequate  must  be  bene 
fundata,  in  other  words  they  must  interpret  that  real 
world  which  the  mind  knows  in  part,  but  does  not  create. 
This,  of  course,  raises  the  question  how  knowledge  can  be 
knowledge  of  what  is  real,  and  we  have  to  face  the  general 
problem  of  the  validity  of  knowledge. 

D. — THE  VALIDITY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

The  na'ive  mind  is  aware  that  errors  are  possible,  but 
it  fully  believes  it  is  able  to  know  things  as  they  are. 
For  reflective  thinking,  however,  this  conclusion  eeems 
premature,  and  the  doubt  arises  whether  our  so-called 
knowledge  is  not  of  appearance  merely.  The  issue  comes 
to  be  this :  Can  we  suppose  the  content  of  our  subjective  act 
of  apprehension  characterises  reality  ?  Are  the  presenta- 
tions of  sense-perception  valid  for  the  real  world  ?  And  do 


THE   VALIDITY    OF    KNOWLEDGE  293 

our  inferences  hold  good  in  the  supersensuous  sphere  ? 
It  has  been  noted  already  that  the  relation  of  the  content 
of  consciousness  to  the  independent  object  cannot  become 
a  problem  until  there  has  been  a  development  of  con- 
ceptual thinking.  For  conceptual  thought  distinguishes 
the  elements  of  the  cognitive  process,  and  contrasts  the 
generalised  object  with  our  fragmentary  experiences  of  it. 
Moreover,  on  this  level  the  thinking  process  differentiates 
itself  from  the  knowing  process:  for  not  all  thinking  is 
knowledge ;  but  thinking  can  assume  the  function  of  a 
means  to  knowledge,  and  we  habitually  think  in  order  to 
know.  This  is  illustrated  by  the  more  or  less  elaborate 
processes  of  inference  by  which  we  deduce  from  known 
data  a  further  knowledge.  It  is  thought  which  develops 
the  intellectual  constructions  that  form  a  kind  of  bridge 
from  the  truths  we  know  to  new  truths,  and  when  such 
inferences  justify  themselves  they  go  to  form  part  of 
the  growing  body  of  knowledge.  The  civilised  man, 
through  the  medium  of  spoken  and  written  language, 
receives  a  rich  inheritance  of  thought,  and  is  thereby  made 
partaker  of  the  results  of  the  process  of  ideal  con- 
struction by  which  the  developing  race  has  made  experi- 
ence coherent. 

But  however  sure  the  thinker  may  be  of  the  value  of 
this  heritage,  however  ready  he  may  be  to  maintain  its 
substantial  truth,  he  cannot  fairly  defend  the  notion  that 
it  is  a  complete  and  perfect  expression  of  what  is  real. 
For  it  is  clear  that  reality  is  wider  than  experience,  and 
experience  in  its  turn  is  richer  than  thought.  It  is 
equally  plain  that  errors  are  constantly  being  made,  so  that 
what  at  one  time  is  taken  for  knowledge  turns  out  to  be 
fictitious.  The  existence  of  error,  the  fact  that  people 
may  believe  to  be  real  what  in  the  end  turns  out  to  be 
unreal,  forces  them  to  consider  the  problem  of  the  validity 
of  knowledge.  Man  interprets  the  presentations  of  sense, 
and  believes  that  a  certain  result  follows ;  but  a  further 
experience  teaches  him  his  belief  has  gone  beyond  his  data, 
and  the  reality  is  different  from  what  he  supposed.  Ke- 


294  THE   NATURE   OF    KNOWLEDGE 

curring  experiences  of  this  kind  compel  him  to  admit  that 
he  does  not  always  know  when  he  thinks  he  knows,  and 
appearance  sometimes  wears  the  garb  of  reality.  So, 
further  reflexion  raises  the  question,  how  far  he  can  be 
sure  he  has  any  adequate  knowledge  of  the  real  world. 
For  scientific  thinking  dispels  the  naive  belief  that  the 
world  given  to  us  in  sense-perception  is  identical  with  the 
world  as  it  is  in  itself.  The  apparently  solid  object 
science  resolves  into  a  moving  system  of  atoms,  and  the 
colour  which  adorns  it  into  the  oscillations  of  an  invisible 
ether.  But  while  science  dissipates  the  naive  view  of 
things,  scientific  theories  are  not  always  consistent  with 
one  another,  and  they  are  constantly  changing.  If  this 
bewilders  the  common  man,  the  man  of  science  shares  his 
perplexity,  and  a  recent  scientist  has  told  us :  "  We  do  not 
know,  and  are  probably  incapable  of  discovering,  what 
matter  is." l  A  doubt  of  this  kind  easily  induces  a  more 
general  doubt  in  regard  to  the  powers  of  the  knowing 
mind,  and  may  provoke  a  sceptical  reply  to  the  query, 
Can  we  know  what  is  ultimately  real  ?  or,  is  our  knowledge 
valid  ? 

With  some  persons  a  proper  answer  to  these  '  sceptical 
doubts'  would  be  to  say,  that,  if  our  knowledge  is  a 
makeshift  and  an  inadequate  device,  still  it  is  sufficient  in 
point  of  fact  for  our  mundane  needs:  it  serves  us  to 
manipulate  things  in  our  own  interests.  But  if  this 
answer  is  enough  for  some,  it  is  peculiarly  unsatisfactory 
to  the  religious  man,  who  is  concerned  to  maintain  he  has 
a  knowledge  of  a  Reality  that  transcends  this  matter-of- 
fact  world.  The  religious  philosopher  at  least  should  not 
refuse  to  meet  the  argument,  that  there  is  something  in 
the  nature  of  knowledge  which  renders  it  invalid  or  in- 
herently inadequate  to  reality.  Only  by  repelling  this 
attack  can  he  secure  his  own  position.  In  offering  some 
observations  on  this  subject,  let  me  first  remind  the  reader 
that  complete  scepticism  is  illogical  and  refutes  itself. 
Even  a  '  spirit  that  denies '  must  stand  somewhere  in 

1  The  late  P.  G.  Tait  as  quoted  by  Pearson,  Grammar  of  Science,  p.  247. 


THE   VALIDITY    OF   KNOWLEDGE  295 

order  to  deny,  and,  though  only  to  knock  down,  a  man 
needs  a  foothold.  The  doubter  at  least  assumes  the  validity 
of  his  grounds  for  doubting.  But  however  prone  we  are 
to  doubt,  we  find  we  cannot  consistently  doubt,  as 
Descartes  said,  the  certainty  of  our  own  existence.  And 
there  are  some  kinds  of  immediate  knowledge  whose 
truth  it  would  be  absurd  and  meaningless  to  deny.  To 
say  that  immediate  judgments  of  consciousness,  like  "  I  am 
hot "  or  "  I  am  hungry,"  are  false,  is  a  statement  without 
any  possible  justification,  and  it  must  be  rejected  at  once. 
There  are  other  forms  of  immediate  judgment  which  are 
likewise  unimpeachable.  That  "  two  and  two  make  four," 
or  that  "  a  circle  is  not  a  triangle,"  or  that  "  the  whole  A 
is  greater  than  its  part  B,"  are  judgments  of  relation  which 
are  immediately  evident,  as  Locke  held.  No  mediate 
inference  could  strengthen  or  weaken  the  certainty  of  these 
judgments.  Generalising  we  may  say  that  there  are 
judgments  of  consciousness,  of  existence,  and  of  relation 
which  we  are  intellectually  obliged  to  regard  as  valid. 
Were  they  invalid  no  rational  deduction  would  be  possible. 
The  process  of  proof  is  an  articulation  of  elements  within 
experience :  it  runs  back  in  the  end  to  first  principles 
which  are  not  capable  of  proof  but  are  grasped  intuitively.1 
Yet  one  has  to  remember  that  a  great  many  judgments 
which  wear  an  appearance  of  immediate  certainty  to  the 
individual,  really  involve  interpretations  of  sense-data  or 
of  subjective  experiences,  and  so  are  not  immune  from 
error.2 

Nevertheless  the  validity  of  certain  intuitive  judgments 
comes  very  far  short  of  securing  the  validity  of  knowledge 
as  a  whole.  For  a  great  part  of  our  knowledge  is  con- 
ceptual and  mediate :  it  is  knowledge  about  things,  and 
stands  or  falls  with  the  validity  of  the  reasoning  process. 

1  Aristotle,  it  is   well   known,    pointed    this   out :    el  y&p  dvdyKr)  p.tv 
^irlffTOiffdfK.  T&  irpbrfpa.  Kal  ££  &v  ij  air68eit;i$,  IVrarat  8t  irore  TO.  #jue<ra,  TO.VT 
ai>air68€iKTa  Avdyxri  etpcu,  Anal.  Post.  i.  3,  p.  72,  6.  18. 

2  As  in  sense-perception  which  involves  unconscious  inference,    or  in 
mystic  experience  which  implies  interpretation. 


296        THE  NATURE  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

The  sphere  of  conceptual  thinking,  expressed  in  universal 
judgments,  is  .the  sphere  of  generalised  knowledge  and  of 
science.  Here  an  elaborate  activity  of  mind  is  revealed  in 
distinguishing  and  relating,  and  organising  experience  in 
universally  intelligible  ways.  Thought  has  now  gained 
freedom  and  mastery  in  dealing  with  its  materials,  and  in 
its  operation  transcends  what  is  given.  But  the  endeavour 
of  developed  reason  to  interpret  and  explain  the  world  by 
a  process  of  ideal  reconstruction  is  by  no  means  uniformly 
successful.  Errors  are  possible,  and  they  occur :  theories 
are  put  forward  and  have  to  be  modified,  and  perhaps, 
after  a  while,  modified  again.  Hence  some  regard  a 
scientific  theory  as  no  more  than  a  convenient  hypothesis 
by  which  we  try  to  systematise  for  the  time  being  a  body 
of  judgments  in  some  particular  sphere.  The  errors  to 
which  we  are  liable  and  the  provisional  character  of  many 
of  our  theories,  have  suggested  to  some,  as  I  have  already 
said,  a  doubt  whether  our  conceptual  processes  are  at  all 
adequate  to  the  apprehension  of  reality.  May  not  our 
thought,  by  its  very  form,  be  inherently  incapable  of  grasp- 
ing the  true  nature  of  things  ?  Knowledge  is  a  dis- 
tinguishing and  selecting  activity  :  in  the  judgment,  subject 
and  predicate  are  set  over  against  one  another,  and  the 
that  of  things  is  severed  from  the  what.  Is  not  this  to 
distort  and  mutilate  reality  for  our  own  purposes  ?  Is  not 
this  ipso  facto  to  sacrifice  any  claim  to  the  truth  of  our 
judgments  ?  Reality  must  be  a  whole,  perfect  and 
harmonious,  so  it  transcends  our  relational  thinking  which, 
by  its  method  of  procedure,  sacrifices  all  claim  to  truth.1 

1  The  philosophical  reader  will  remember  that  this  opinion  has  been 
urged  with  great  power  and  keenness  by  Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley  in  his  Appear- 
ance and  Reality.  Mr.  Bradley  accentuates  the  distinguishing  and  separating 
side  of  thought  to  the  disadvantage  of  its  connecting  aspect,  and  only 
reaches  Reality  in  a  whole  of  feeling  which  transcends  the  form  of  thinking. 
Relational  thought  in  his  view  is  condemned  to  move  in  the  realm  of 
appearance.  His  position,  however,  is  not  completely  sceptical,  for  he 
believes  there  are  degrees  of  truth,  stages  in  the  adequacy  of  knowledge. 
But  the  question  remains,  whether  we  could  define  '  degrees  of  reality ' 
without  any  knowledge  of  Reality  itself.  Moreover,  Mr.  Bradley  admits 
that  an  idea,  though  inadequate  to  reality,  works  or  gives  practically 


THE   VALIDITY    OF    KNOWLEDGE  297 

Those  who  are  not  Pragmatists  may  still  find  in  the 
pragmatic  method,  which  emphasises  the  working- value 
of  ideas  and  the  satisfying  experiences  to  which  they  lead, 
a  wholesome  corrective  to  sceptical  doubts  about  the 
validity  of  knowledge.  The  plain  man  who  finds  know- 
ledge serves  his  turn  will  not  despair  of  it.  The  sceptic, 
as  Hume  frankly  admitted,  lays  aside  his  scepticism  when 
he  leaves  the  study  and  goes  forth  into  the  world.  And 
it  is  a  fair  argument  that  theory  should  not  be  sharply 
sundered  from  practice :  the  one  ought  to  support  the 
other,  and  if  we  find  knowledge  subserving  life  in  the 
experience  of  everyday,  the  fact  should  weigh  with  us 
when  we  feel  inclined  to  doubt  the  validity  of  knowledge. 
The  departmental  conception  of  human  nature  is  never 
satisfactory,  for  it  is  essentially  artificial;  nor  is  it  con- 
sistent that  we  should  trust  our  powers  of  knowing  in 
common  life  and  doubt  them  when  we  make  them  the 
object  of  reflexion.  The  sceptical  thinker,  confronted 
with  this  dilemma,  refines  and  distinguishes.  That  which 
is  practically  useful,  he  tells  us,  need  not  be  perfectly  true, 
and  concepts  which  help  us  to  manipulate  experience  do 
not  on  that  account  reach  to  what  is  ultimate  and  real. 
The  case  is  like  that  of  a  provisional  hypothesis,  which  is 
useful  in  a  certain  field  and  for  a  certain  purpose,  but  has 
no  claim  to  be  strictly  true.  As  Kant  has  shown,  judg- 
ments which  are  effective  in  one  sphere  may  beget  con- 
tradictions in  another.  And  though  our  knowledge  serves 
for  the  day  and  place,  this  does  not  prove  it  ultimately 
valid. 

If  this  line  of  thought  can  be  fully  maintained,  the 
consequences  to  religion,  as  we  have  already  remarked, 

satisfactory  results.  This  admission  should  surely  carry  him  further  than  he 
has  gone.  More  recently  M.  Bergson  has  argued  that  thought,  by  the  static 
character  of  its  forms  and  the  constant  use  of  spatial  imagery,  is  incapable 
of  apprehending  real  duration  in  which  the  elements  interpenetrate. 
Thought  artificially  fixes  the  real,  which  is  a  flux  of  becoming.  So  Bergson 
believes  reality  is  only  grasped  by  intuition.  But  thought  is  not  so  bound 
down  to  spatial  images  as  Bergson  supposes  ;  and  the  demand  that  change 
should  be  related  to  the  permanent  is  not  artificial. 


298  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

are  serious.  The  only  logical  issue  of  this  speculative 
scepticism  would  be  religious  agnosticism,  and  the  refusal 
to  concede  more  to  religious  beliefs  than  a  kind  of  practi- 
cal utility.  By  way  of  reply  I  would  urge  that  we  are 
entitled  to  lay  much  more  stress  on  the  practical  working 
of  knowledge  than  our  opponents  allow.  No  doubt  the 
existence  of  errors  warns  us  that  representations  in 
consciousness  are  not  always  adequate.  Yet  the  fact  that 
we  come  to  see  their  inadequacy  and  correct  them  shows 
we  have  means  of  verification  at  our  disposal.  You 
cannot  recognise  an  error  without  some  knowledge  of  what 
is  true.  The  elimination  of  faults  of  judgment  and 
mistakes  in  theory,  and  their  replacement  by  judgments 
and  theories  which  give  better  results,  argue  that  we  make 
progress  in  our  interpretation  of  reality  through  the  forms 
of  knowing.  One  cannot  understand  how,  if  the  relation 
of  subject  and  predicate  is  a  mutilation  of  the  real,  man 
could,  in  virtue  of  his  thinking,  act  and  react  successfully 
upon  his  environment,  A  conception  which  operates 
effectively  in  experience  must  interpret,  not  falsify. 

Against  the  argument  that  thought,  in  the  judgment, 
separates  and  so  does  injustice  to  what  is  essentially  a 
whole,  the  answer  is  that  the  movement  of  thought,  while 
true  to  its  own  laws,  is  conditioned  in  their  application  by 
the  nature  of  the  object.  Cognition,  it  has  been  said,  has 
objective  conditions  without  which  the  subjective  process 
would  be  ineffectual,  or  rather  would  not  exist  at  all.1 
Thought  does  not  create,  nor  in  knowing  does  it  arbitrarily 
combine,  the  differences  with  which  it  deals.  Kant  laid 
stress  on  the  active  function  of  the  subject  in  cognition, 
but  it  is  also  necessary  to  insist  that  there  must  be  unity 
and  order  in  the  world  of  objects,  ere  it  could  become  the 
content  of  knowledge.  Not  creative  synthesis  but  ideal 
reconstruction,  taking  form  in  representation,  is  the  office 
of  the  knowing  subject.2  It  is,  however,  easy  to  fall  into 

1  B.  Varisco,  /  Massimi  Problemi,  1910,  p.  96.    The  writer's  treatment  of 
the  implications  of  sensation  and  cognition  is  very  clear  and  able. 

2  Cp.  Varisco,  op.  cit.  pp.  99-100. 


THE   VALIDITY   OF   KNOWLEDGE  299 

confusion  if  we  suppose  that  conscious  states  are  existences 
interposed  between  the  knowing  subject  and  the  cognised 
object,  existences  which  assume  the  fashion  of  representa- 
tions, and  float,  as  it  were,  between  the  subject  and  object. 
The  truth  is  that  objects  exist  in  consciousness,  and  mind 
is  expressed  through  consciousness :  consciousness  is  not 
a  sort  of  tertium  quid  between  the  two.  The  self  is  the 
unity  in  all  states  of  consciousness ;  and  the  cognised 
object  as  content  of  consciousness  is  an  expression  of  the 
nature  of  the  transsubjective  real,  or  the  way  in  which 
it  acts.  At  every  stage  of  experience,  from  feeling  to 
cognition,  an  interaction  of  subject  and  object  is  present ; 
and  it  is  true  to  say  that  sensation  or  cognition  is  a 
revelation  of  the  nature  of  the  object  as  well  as  of  the 
subject.  Even  when  we  are  only  conscious  of  the  object 
as  a  felt  whole,  its  qualities  and  their  orderly  connexion 
are  implicitly  present  to  feeling.  They  gradually  become 
explicit  and  define  themselves  in  the  growing  consciousness 
of  the  subject.  The  process  is  the  explication  in  conscious- 
ness of  the  nature  of  the  object ;  and  the  orderly  differ- 
ences in  the  object  which  mind  explicates  become  a  means 
whereby  the  ego  grows  increasingly  conscious  of  itself. 
But  the  important  point  to  remember  is,  that  the  mind 
does  not  and  cannot  superimpose  an  order  of  its  own  upon 
an  alien  object.  What  it  represents  in  terms  of  its  own 
activity  must  express  the  qualities  and  connexions  of  the 
object,  as  they  reveal  themselves  in  and  are  interpreted 
by  the  cognitive  subject.  The  content  of  our  cognitive 
consciousness,  though  it  manifests  the  nature  of  the  object, 
is  not,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  identical  with  it.  Whether 
in  perceptual  or  in  conceptual  knowledge,  there  is  always 
an  element  in  the  object  which  goes  beyond  our  knowing, 
and  the  existence  of  transsubjective  reality  is  the  sine 
qua  non  of  interaction  between  the  knower  and  the  known. 
The  extension  of  the  real  beyond  its  presence  to  the 
experient  subject  is  necessary  to  explain  the  concrete 
variety  of  experienced  objects.  The  different  applications 
of  a  general  principle  of  synthesis — say  the  causal  judg- 


300  THE   NATURE   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

ment — can  only  be  explained  through  the  specific  character 
-    of    the  elements  which   are  synthesised,  not  through  the 
';*•'-.  form  of  synthesis  itself.     This  character  the  cognising  self 
expresses  in  its  own  way,  but  it  does  not  create  it.     So 
we  come  to    a    result  quite  opposed    to   the    well-known 
remark  of  Kant  in  his  Critique :    "  The    order    and    con- 
formity  to    law    in    the    phenomena   we   call    nature   we 
ourselves  introduce." 

At  this  point  a  difficulty  must  be  considered.  If  it 
were  possible  to  maintain  that  the  character  of  our 
experience,  its  specific  features  and  their  connexion,  were 
entirely  due  to  the  organisation  of  the  knowing  mind,  then 
the  validity  of  our  knowledge  would  seem  to  be  secured 
by  the  constitutive  nature  of  our  intelligence.  For  the 
test  of  knowledge  would  lie  within  knowledge:  the 
coherency  of  our  representations  with  one  another  would 
ensure  validity.  But  if  we  are  constrained  to  admit  the 
existence  of  transsubjective  realities,  the  case  is  altered. 
We  cannot  have  a  direct  knowledge  of  what  is  trans- 
subjective  save  in  the  aspect  in  which  it  is  revealed  to 
consciousness,  and  to  compare  our  representations  with  the 
reality  beyond  them  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  impossible. 
You  can  compare  a  percept  with  a  percept,  but  not  with 
something  not  perceived.  But  though  the  transsubjective 
,  cannot  be  immediately  known,  it  may  be  known  mediately, 
•  and  by  inference  we  can  go  beyond  what  is  given  in  the 
medium  of  representation.  Moreover,  if  we  are  right 
in  concluding  that  cognitive  activity  is  an  interpreta- 
tive or  reconstructive  process,  we  can  draw  inferences 
from  the  object  cognised  about  the  structure  of  the 
real.  The  practical  success  of  our  knowledge  would 
be  impossible,  if  the  object  in  its.  ultimate  nature  were 
not  allied  to  the  subject.  If  in  knowing  things  we 
obscured  or  distorted  their  nature,  we  could  not  by  means 
of  this  quasi  knowledge  successfully  manipulate  them ; 
and  if  the  inner  being  of  things  were  totally  alien  to 
consciousness,  we  could  not  know  them  at  all.  The 
inference  from  the  fact  that  our  knowledge  works  is,  that 


THE    VALIDITY    OF    KNOWLEDGE  301 

the  relation  of  the  self  to  its  states,  which  is  the  ground 
of  the  reference  of  predicate  to  subject,  stands  for  a 
structure  of  reality  which  is  typical,  and  extends  down- 
ward into  the  so-called  realm  of  matter.  If  the  core  of 
reality  be  individualities  which  maintain  themselves  in 
their  changing  states  or  qualities,  then  the  form  of 
conceptual  judgment  does  not  distort  but  expresses  their 
nature.  So  the  form  in  which  our  mind  can  alone  know 
an  object  would,  at  the  same  time,  be  the  explication  of 
the  nature  of  the  object.  From  this  point  of  view  we 
can  see  that  the  growth  of  experience  from  feeling- 
consciousness  to  perceptual  and  conceptual  knowing  is 
the  continuous  development  of  a  single  process,  and  in  this 
process  the  structure  of  reality  is  gradually  defined  and 
expressed  in  a  system  of  judgments.  We  know  reality 
and  not  mere  appearance,  because  we  interpret  and 
reconstruct  the  real. 

Epistemology  runs  back  to  metaphysics,  and  the 
full  justification  of  the  view  suggested  in  the  foregoing 
paragraph  must  be  reserved  for  a  later  chapter.  At  the 
same  time  we  have  come  far  enough  to  see  there  is  good 
cause  for  maintaining  that  knowledge  is  valid,  and  sound 
reasons  against  supposing  it  is  fatally  inadequate  to  reality. 
Those  who  are  still  inclined  to  doubt  may  derive  en- 
couragement from  the  way  in  which  the  knowing  process 
works  in  the  service  of  life,  and  they  may  receive  confidence 
from  the  manner  in  which  errors  are  corrected  and  know- 
ledge is  verified.  Of  course  certain  other  problems  are 
raised  by  the  forms  of  religious  knowledge,  problems  not 
directly  involved  in  secular  and  scientific  knowledge.  Nor 
does  it  follow  that  those  who  are  assured  of  the  adequacy 
of  the  latter  will  also  be  convinced  of  the  adequacy  of  the 
former.  But  a  well-founded  assurance  of  the  validity  of 
knowledge  in  general  is  necessary,  if  we  are  to  deal  hope- 
fully with  the  problem  of  religious  knowledge.  When  the 
foundations  of  secular  knowledge  are  shaken,  the  edifice  of 
spiritual  knowledge  can  hardly  be  secure. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE. 

THE  question  how  far  religious  persons  really  know  the 
objects  they  reverence,  is  one  man  can  hardly  help  asking, 
when  he  has  begun  to  reflect  upon  himself  and  his  experi- 
ence. Even  before  he  had  deliberately  doubted  the 
validity  of  his  knowing  processes,  his  own  hard  fortune 
had  suggested  doubts  about  the  supersensuous  beings  he 
worshipped.  Continued  apathy  and  neglect  on  the  part  of 
his  gods  would  tend  to  provoke  perplexity  and  uncertainty 
on  the  part  of  man.  And  with  the  development  of  re- 
flexion the  question  would  be  directly  raised,  whether  the 
supposed  knowledge  of  divine  powers  was  a  real  knowledge. 
Let  us  begin  our  discussion  of  the  problem  of  religious 
knowledge  by  a  short  statement  of  what  we  find  in  religious 
experience. 

A. — THE  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  RELIGIOUS  MIND 
TO  ITS  OBJECT. 

Although  it  may  involve  some  repetition,  it  will  conduce 
to  clearness  if  we  regard  the  way  in  which  the  developing 
religious  consciousness  relates  itself  to  its  object.  This 
consciousness  is  a  historic  growth  passing  through  different 
phases,  and  the  object  undergoes  development  in  a  way 
that  corresponds  to  the  development  of  the  subject.  It  is 
usual  to  speak  of  the  process  by  which  man  apprehends  his 
gods  or  God  as  knowing;  but  it  is  not  knowing  in  the 
form  of  understanding,  or  of  explaining  in  the  scientific 
sense.  It  is  rather  the  knowledge  of  practical  acquaintance, 


302 


THE    RELIGIOUS    MIND    AND    ITS   OBJECT          303 

or  the  familiarity  born  of  experience,  and  it  is  expressed  in 
the  first  instance  in  the  form  of  naive  belief.  This  belief 
is  distinguished  from  sheer  matter-of-fact  belief  by  its 
strongly  emotional  tone,  and  also  by  a  reference  to  some- 
thing more  than  is  directly  given — to  something  which 
lies  beyond  the  immediate  environment.  Man  with  his 
strong  self-conserving  impulse  finds  the  belief  of  primary 
value,  and  so  he  develops  it ;  but  to  begin  with,  it  is  an  act 
of  apprehension  whose  content  is  vague  and  fluctuating. 
Out  of  the  life  of  impulse  grows  the  larger  world  of 
desires ;  and  desire  gives  birth  to  that  imaginative  activity 
which  expands  and  enriches  the  religious  object,  so  that  it 
may  respond  to  new  human  needs  and  demands.  This 
conative  process  revealed  in  impulse  and  desire,  and  always 
working  purposively,  has  its  maturer  fruit  in  those  processes 
of  knowledge  by  which  man  adjusts  means  to  end,  and  so 
gives  greater  stability  and  harmony  to  his  life.  But  the 
demands  of  life  thus  expanded  require  a  deeper  conception 
of  the  religious  object  which  is  to  satisfy  them :  moreover, 
as  the  counterpart  of  knowledge,  there  develops  the  spiritual 
attitude  of  faith,  by  means  of  which  the  religious  personality 
strives  to  enter  into  an  enduring  and  helpful  relation  with 
the  Being  whom  it  reverences.  On  the  level  of  imaginative 
representation,  anthropomorphism  is  rampant,  and  the  gods 
are  freely  credited  with  the  worst  as  well  as  the  best 
passions  of  their  worshippers.  They  are  subject  to  anger 
and  jealousy,  love  and  revenge,  and  the  elements  of 
character  evolved  in  the  social  life  are  transferred  to  the 
deities  who  preside  over  it.  These  imaginative  determina- 
tions of  religious  objects  prevail  at  a  stage  of  culture  which 
precedes  the  scientific  consciousness,  but  when  that 
consciousness  develops  it  soon  comes  into  conflict  with  the 
traditional  religion.  On  the  other  hand,  at  the  stage  of 
personal  faith,  the  purified  spirit  develops  a  conception  of 
God  in  consonance  with  its  own  character.  The  wilder 
embellishments  of  the  imagination  cease  to  have  a  value 
for  the  spiritual  consciousness,  and  the  object  of  its  faith 
represents  the  demands  of  its  own  inner  life.  Yet  spiritual 


304  RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE 

faith,  like  pious  imagination,  does  not  bring  to  its  task  the 
methods  of  the  critical  understanding  or  of  scientific  ex- 
planation. The  heart  believes  its  own  reasons  are  inde- 
pendent of  the  understanding,  and  sufficient  apart  from  it. 
And  where  the  religious  consciousness  is  intense,  as  in  the 
prophet  and  spiritual  leader,  faith  is  its  own  assurance  and 
draws  from  its  own  inward  fulness.  This  upward  move- 
ment of  faith  is  the  living  spring  of  personal  religion,  and 
it  establishes  that  direct  and  sympathetic  converse  with 
the  object,  on  the  part  of  the  subject,  out  of  which  the 
inner  religious  life  grows.  In  practical  experience  we  find 
the  existence  of  a  sympathetic  rapport  between  ourselves 
and  another  human  character  is  a  condition  of  our  insight 
into  the  motives  and  significance  of  that  character.  Some- 
thing similar  holds  of  our  relation  to  the  object  of  our 
religious  reverence.  The  knowledge  of  God  which  is 
distinctly  religious  is  based  on  the  affections  and  the  will, 
not  on  grounds  which  are  purely  intellectual.  Religious 
experience  conditions  religious  insight :  this  seems  to  be 
the  element  of  truth  in  the  old  contention,  that  faith  must 
precede  understanding.  Credo  ut  intelligam  was  the  motto 
of  Anselm,  though  it  is  well  to  remember  he  added :  negli- 
gentia  mihi  videtur,  si  postquam  conftrmati  sumus  in  fide, 
non  studemiis  quod  credimus  intelligere.  And  the  same 
thought  of  the  need  of  a  believing  knowledge  is  set  forth 
in  the  Theologia  Germanica :  "  He  who  would  know  before 
he  believeth  cometh  never  to  true  knowledge." 1 

This  truth  of  an  experimental  knowledge  of  divine  things 
has  always  been  cherished  by  the  spiritually-minded  ones 
whose  religion  has  grown  out  of  their  life.  It  appears 
prominently  in  Pietism  and  Mysticism.  But  beyond 
question  the  truth  has  been  obscured,  and  the  situation 
complicated,  by  the  intrusion  of  alien  considerations. 

1  Theol.  Germanica,  cap.  48.  In  the  same  chapter  the  following  sugges- 
tive words  occur  :  "  We  are  speaking  of  a  certain  Truth  which  it  is  possible 
to  know  by  experience,  but  which  ye  must  believe  in,  before  ye  know  it  by 
experience."  Here  we  have  a  natural  development  from  belief,  through 
experience,  to  spiritual  knowledge. 


THE   RELIGIOUS    MIND   AND    ITS    OBJECT          305 

Experimental  insight  has  been  mixed  up  with  theoretical 
knowledge  based  on  evidences  as  well  as  commended  on 
grounds  of  authority.  The  way  in  which  this  confusion 
was  brought  about  is  fairly  plain.  Faith -ideas  were 
elaborated  into  religious  doctrines,  and  finally  fixed  in 
theological  dogmas ;  and  the  living  movement  of  faith, 
which  had  fashioned  itself  out  of  historic  experience, 
hardened  into  a  well-defined  opinion,  held  in  deference  to 
the  Church  or  because  it  was  supposed  capable  of  rational 
proof.  One  need  hardly  say  that,  when  religion  passes 
into  an  institutional  and  dogmatic  form,  the  value  of  this 
form  tends  to  be  exaggerated,  and  that  at  the  expense  of 
the  spiritual  experience  which  is  more  essential.  This 
tendency  takes 'an  extreme  shape  when  the  historic  order 
is  reversed,  and  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrinal  system  is 
declared  to  be  the  condition  of  the  spiritual  experience. 
The  outcome  of  this  movement  is  a  perplexing  juxtaposition 
of  faith  and  reason,  of  the  practical  and  the  theoretical 
kinds  of  knowledge.  The  idea  which  issued  fresh  from 
the  experience  of  faith  was  afterwards  shaped  into  a 
religious  doctrine  by  reflexion,  and  then  connected  with 
other  doctrines :  by  theological  thought  it  was  raised  to  an 
explanation  of  religious  and  other  experience,  and  enunciated 
as  a  theoretical  truth.  But  in  this  process  there  has  been 
no  real  interpenetration  of  faith  by  reason :  the  latter  has 
simply  come  in  as  an  auxiliary,  by  and  by  thrusting  itself 
to  the  front  and  illegitimately  claiming  the  whole  product 
for  its  own.  The  consequence  is,  that  rationality  is 
asserted  of  doctrines  which  have  never  really  been  scruti- 
nised and  tested  by  reason.  In  the  Scholastic  Theology 
we  see  the  impasse  to  which  we  are  brought,  if  we  claim 
theoretical  validity  for  dogmas  whose  foundations  we  refuse 
to  subject  to  rational  reflexion  and  criticism. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  transformation  of 
faith,  from  a  spiritual  insight  based  on  experience  into 
a  holding  for  true  on  grounds  of  tradition  and  authority, 
has  been  of  fateful  significance.  It  has  helped  men  to 
confuse  the  framework  of  religion  with  its  vital  spirit, 


306  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

and  prompted  them  to  magnify  quite  unduly  the  im- 
portance of  doctrinal  knowledge.  It  has  made  it  possible 
for  theologians  to  dignify  with  the  name  of  faith  an 
unreflecting  acceptance  of  dogmas  and  traditional  inter- 
pretations, while  it  has  rendered  it  harder  for  many  to 
believe  that  a  man  may  have  the  spirit  of  faith  who 
refuses  to  reverence  the  letter.  Faith  in  the  sense  of 
theoretical  knowing,  faith  which  means  a  holding  for  true 
on  the  church's  authority,  is  a  derivative  and  secondary 
product  of  religious  history,  from  which  the  elements 
of  value  in  the  earlier  use  of  the  conception  have  well- 
nigh  vanished.  Faith  often  means  no  more  than  this 
for  many,  when  the  institutional  side  of  religion  greatly 
preponderates  over  the  personal,  and  when'  those  constitu- 
tive spiritual  experiences  out  of  which  the  religion  issued 
are  passing  into  the  region  of  tradition.  The  result  is 
an  impoverishment  and  weakening  of  the  religious  spirit, 
and  the  decay  of  what  is  vital  in  religion. 

This  identification  of  faith  with  a  supposed  theoretical 
knowledge  has  worked  against  a  rapprochement  between 
the  scientific  and  the  theological  mind.  Theologians, 
assuming  that  their  doctrines  had  theoretical  value  though 
not  theoretically  thought  out,  advanced  them  as  explana- 
tions of  facts  within  the  world  of  experience ;  and  these 
explanations  were  frequently  in  conflict  with  the  explana- 
tions evolved  by  scientific  reflexion.  To  take  an  illustra- 
tion :  theology  explains  the  origin  of  man  by  a  divine 
act  of  creation  at  a  specific  time  and  place,  while  science 
regards  him  as  the  outcome  of  a  long  process  of  evolution. 
In  their  present  form  the  two  views  cannot  be  reconciled, 
and  it  is  better  not  to  attempt  it.  In  a  dispute  of  this 
sort  the  position  of  the  theologian  was  seriously  weakened 
by  the  tacit  assumptions  he  had  made.  On  the  one 
hand,  he  assumed  the  doctrine  he  taught  could  be  taken 
for  scientifically  valid,  and  any  conclusion  of  science 
which  conflicted  with  it  must  be  false.  On  the  other  hand, 
while  making  this  claim,  he  had  withdrawn  the  doctrine 
which  was  the  original  premiss  of  his  argument  from 


THE   SPHERE    OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE        307 

the  criticism  of  thought,  on  the  plea  that  it  was  guaranteed 
by  a  divine  authority.  This  blending  of  the  rational  and 
the  supra-rational  was  open  to  hostile  and  effective 
criticism  from  the  side  of  science ;  and  the  scientific 
thinker  naturally  contended  that  the  theologian  ought 
not  to  appeal  to  reason  at  one  time,  and  to  invoke 
authority  at  another  time,  according  as  he  found  it 
convenient  so  to  do.  To  stand  wholly  on  the  one  ground 
or  the  other  was  at  least  intelligible,  but  to  shift  from 
the  one  to  the  other  was  unjustifiable.  The  situation, 
I  think  it  will  be  admitted,  was  unfortunate,  and  was 
the  result  of  mixing  up  the  facts  of  religious  experience 
with  pseudo-scientific  deductions  from  them.  The  trouble 
was  closely  connected  with  the  ambiguous  use  of  the 
term  faith  at  the  hands  of  theologians,  the  term  now 
denoting  an  insight  born  of  spiritual  experience,  and 
again  a  theoretical  knowledge  resting  on  adequate  evidence. 
The  whole  problem  therefore  deserves  discussion,  in  order 
if  possible  to  remove  ambiguities  and  difficulties.  More 
especially  will  it  be  necessary  to  consider  carefully  whether 
we  are  justified  in  distinguishing  religious  from  scientific 
knowledge,  spiritual  from  theoretical  knowing.  If  we 
are  right  in  so  distinguishing,  the  question  remains  how 
the  one  is  differentiated  from  the  other,  and  how  the 
two  are  related  to  one  another.  The  problem  is  not 
a  simple  one,  and  a  perfectly  satisfactory  solution  may 
not  be  reached ;  but  it  demands  discussion  in  the  interests 
of  truth  and  good  understanding. 


B. — THE  SPHERE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  EELIGIOUS 
KNOWLEDGE. 

(a)  Religious  Knowledge  and  Empirical  Knowledge. 

It  will  be  generally  admitted  that  religious  knowledge 
does  not  develop  after  the  fashion  of  scientific  knowledge : 
it  is  not  a  gradual  winning  of  assured  results  by  a  process 
of  analysis  and  synthesis,  of  induction  and  deduction, 


308  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

— a  process  which  tests  what  is  given  to  us  in  experience. 
Facts  of  experience  are  no  doubt  the  occasion  and  stimulus 
of  spiritual  discernment,  but  it  is  the  needs  and  demands 
of  the  inner  life  which  call  forth  into  consciousness  the 
object  of  religious  faith.  And  that  object  differs  from 
the  object  of  scientific  investigation  which  occupies  a 
place  in  the  visible  and  extended  world ;  for  it  lies 
beyond  the  region  of  sense-perception,  and  its  existence 
cannot  be  verified  by  any  appeal  to  the  senses.  Religious 
knowledge,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  neither  is 
nor  claims  to  be  the  knowledge  of  scientific  understanding ; 
and  this  ought  to  be  remembered  by  those  who  seek 
to  discredit  it  for  not  being  what  it  does  not  pretend 
to  be.  Men  believe  in  their  gods  because  they  need 
them,  not  because  they  can  understand  them  or  explain 
things  through  them.  If  scientific  knowing  is  the  only 
form  of  knowing,  as  some  suggest,  then  of  course  religious 
knowledge  is  an  illusion.  But  the  premiss  is  just  what 
has  to  be  proved ;  and  until  it  is  proved,  it  is  irrelevant 
to  complain  that  religious  knowledge  does  not  satisfy 
the  conditions  of  scientific  knowing.  "  It  is  wrong  always 
and  everywhere  for  any  one  to  believe  anything  on  in- 
sufficient evidence,"  so  wrote  the  late  Professor  Clifford. 
The  suggestion  of  course  is,  that  religious  belief,  being 
based  on  insufficient  evidence,  is  illegitimate.  We  may 
remark  in  passing  that,  if  religion  is  to  be  condemned 
on  this  score,  our  daily  conduct  would  fall  under  the 
same  condemnation,  for  we  all  live  and  work  in  the  faith 
of  the  future.  Another  writer  reminds  us  that  "our 
desires  and  aspirations  are  not  a  guarantee  of  reality," 
in  other  words  are  not  "a  sufficient  evidence"  of  truth.1 
The  whole  point  of  these  criticisms  lies  in  the  assumption 
that  scientific  knowledge  is  the  only  pledge  of  truth, 
and  therefore  what  does  not  conform  to  its  rules  ought 
not  to  be  taken  for  true.  Keligious  representations  do 
not  so  conform,  for  they  are  imaginative,  uncritical,  and 
subject  to  no  logical  test.  In  reply  it  may  be  said, 

1  J.  E.  McTaggart,  Some  Dogmas  of  Religion,  p.  56. 


RELIGIOUS   AND    EMPIRICAL   KNOWLEDGE        309 

that  the  religious  man  only  lays  claim  to  scientific 
knowledge  when  he  has  reached  it  by  scientific  methods : 
but  he  contends  he  possesses  a  religious  knowledge,  a  know- 
ledge which  is  not  scientific  yet  none  the  less  valuable  and 
trustworthy.  The  problem  therefore  is,  whether,  and  how 
far,  the  examination  of  religious  experience  endorses  the 
reality  of  such  a  form  of  knowledge. 

At  the  outset  let  us  guard  against  an  extreme  state- 
ment of  the  case.  The  existence  of  a  form  of  religious 
knowledge  does  not  mean,  and  those  who  accept  it  should 
not  say,  that  it  differs  toto  ccelo  from  theoretical  knowledge. 
Both  forms  of  knowledge  are  sustained  by  the  personal 
self,  and  they  alike  imply  an  activity  of  thought  and 
memory.  Both  work  through  the  medium  of  language, 
and  make  use  of  the  generalisations  which  language 
supplies.  It  is  possible  to  go  further,  and  to  maintain 
that  the  symbolism,  which  is  a  noteworthy  feature  of 
religious  knowing,  is  not  absent  in  the  case  of  theoretical 
knowledge.  In  the  previous  chapter  we  have  tried  to 
argue  for  the  conclusion,  that  the  object  of  outer  ex- 
perience, as  it  is  presented  to  the  subject,  involves  the 
existence  of  a  transsubjective  reality  which  the  subject 
accepts  but  does  not  create.  Consequently  our  knowledge  > 
of  the  external  world  is  an  ideal  construction  which  rests  . 
on  a  process  of  interpretation.  These  interpretations  of 
sense-affection  have  acquired  a  common  form  and  value"f 
in  the  process  of  intersubjective  intercourse,  and  constitute* 
the  content  of  our  ordinary  knowledge;  but  in  the  end 
they  are  interpretations,  not  the  transsubjective  reality 
Regarded  from  this  point  of  view  they  are  symbols,  or, 
to  use  a  figure,  they  are  current  coins  which  denote 
generally  recognised  values,  and  so  facilitate  the  process 
of  interchange.  Nevertheless  they  are  not  symbols  which 
veil  the  real ;  rather  do  they  help  to  reveal  it  to  us, 
for  they  interpret  its  way  of  acting.  Now  here  we  have 
a  process  in  the  sphere  of  theoretical  knowledge  which 
is  akin  to  the  process  which  takes  place  in  the  sphere 
of  faith.  For  faith  means  a  relation  of  the  self  to  a 


310  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

divine  object  that  it  takes  to  be  independently  real,  an 
object  which  the  self  conceives  to  act  towards  it  in 
determinate  ways. 

The  nature  and  acting  of  his  God  the  religious 
man  interprets  through  the  language  of  spiritual  emotion 
and  the  forms  of  practical  life.  The  deity  loves  and 
grieves  ;  he  is  a  monarch  who  rules  his  human  subjects, 
or  a  father  who  blesses  his  earthly  children.  Here  too 
we  have  symbolism ;  and  the  symbol  is  not  to  be  abso- 
lutely identified  with  the  reality,  though  it  may  reveal  in 
a  suggestive  way  the  character  and  action  of  the  divine 
object.  The  scientific  and  the  religious  mind  alike  find 
the  symbol  makes  possible  an  effective  working  relation 
between  man  and  the  reality  which  lies  beyond  him. 
Both  alike  recognise  the  existence  of  this  relationship, 
and  seek  to  act  upon  it  in  the  interests  of  human  well- 
being.  Hence  we  deprecate  the  attempt  to  separate 
absolutely,  and  to  oppose  the  domains  of  spiritual  and 
empirical  knowledge.  They  differ,  no  doubt,  but  not 
entirely;  and  if  the  scientific  thinker  may  criticise  the 
use  of  particular  symbols  by  religious  people,  he  cannot 
wholly  object  to  symbolism  without  criticising  himself. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  hard  to  see  that  the 
method  and  the  interest  of  religious  knowledge  are 
different  from  those  of  empirical  knowledge,  and  a  marked 
difference  of  spirit  is  the  result.  The  inductive  and 
deductive  methods  of  empirical  science,  and  the  mode  of 
explaining  objects  within  the  given  world  of  experience 
by  showing  their  place  and  relations  within  a  connected 
system  of  things,  do  not  directly  concern  the  religious 
man.  Scientific  explanation  is,  in  fact,  inapplicable  in 
the  case  of  a  Being  who  transcends  the  external  order  of 
reality,  and  is  consequently  not  to  be  understood  through 
it.  The  atmosphere  in  which  the  religious  spirit  moves 
is  one  of  reverence  and  mystery,  and  in  the  clear  and  cold 
air  of  scientific  explanation  it  cannot  breathe  freely. 
Theoretical  explanation  has  grown  out  of  the  needs  of 
life :  religion,  too,  is  an  outcome  of  the  needs  of  life,  but 


RELIGIOUS   AND    EMPIRICAL    KNOWLEDGE        311 

the  knowledge  it  aspires  after  is  knowledge  of  a  direct 
and  personal  kind.  The  mediate  knowledge  of  science 
goes  back  to  immediate  apprehension  as  its  foundation ; 
and  it  is  at  this  point  that  scientific  knowing  and  religious 
insight  disclose  a  common  lineage.  For  both  set  out 
from  immediate  experiences,  but  the  lines  on  which  they 
have  developed  run  apart.  In  the  case  of  science  a 
system  of  factual  judgments  has  been  evolved,  while 
the  personal  value-judgments,  if  not  suppressed  altogether, 
at  least  fall  into  the  background.  In  the  case  of  religion 
the  value-judgments  have  always  been  primary  and 
central :  the  religious  man  knows  the  object  of  his  rever- 
ence first  and  foremost  as  a  value  in  relation  to  himself. 
Put  briefly  and  tersely,  he  seeks  to  know  God  as  the 
Supreme  Good  who  satisfies  the  soul,  rather  than  as  the 
Being  who  explains  the  universe.  This  knowledge  is 
practical:  it  has  its  motive  in  the  interests  of  the 
spiritual  life,  and  is  concerned  with  the  working  relations 
of  the  human  spirit  to  the  Divine.  The  judgments  of 
faith,  it  has  been  said,  express  what  God  is  for  us,  not 
what  he  is  in  himself.1  This  implies  that  spiritual  insight 
is  in  terms  of  value ;  it  is  therefore  personal  throughout, 
the  fruit  of  faith  which  is  prompted  by  the  inner  needs 
of  a  spiritual  person. 

But,  it  will  be  asked,  can  a  knowledge  so  bound  up 
with  the  desires  and  needs  of  the  inward  life  be  taken 
for  all  it  claims  to  be  ?  Can  it  be  defended  against  the 
imputation  of  being  purely  imaginative  ?  and,  if  not,  does 
experience  encourage  us  to  trust  the  workings  of  the 
religious  imagination  ?  These  are  important  questions. 

The  answer  to  these  questions  will  ultimately  depend 
on  the  interpretation  we  put  on  spiritual  experience  and 
the  movement  of  faith  which  is  its  outcome.  Faith  is 
the  expression  of  the  active  side  of  our  nature,  and  is  a 
mark  of  a  purposive  and  forward-looking  mind  :  it  denotes 
the  practical  response  of  the  spiritual  self  to  its  own 
inner  needs  and  demands.  The  object  of  faith  is  the 

1  R.  A.  Lipsius,  Glauben  und  Wissen,  p.  19. 


312  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

postulate  which  the  soul  makes,  that  it  may  realise  the 
value  it  desires  and  deems  essential  to  its  own  well-being. 
So  the  religious  man  knows  his  God  as  the  Good  through 
which  he  finds  self-completion  and  inward  peace.  And 
it  is  in  and  through  the  spiritual  function  which  the 
divine  Object  fulfils  in  his  experience  that  he  claims  to 
know  it.  The  relation  is  ethical  and  practical,  and  the 
knowledge  arises  out  of  sympathetic  fellowship  and  com- 
munion of  spirit.  The  spiritual  worshipper  claims  to 
know  God  through  his  spiritual  experience  and  the  ideas 
which  issue  from  it.  Faith  on  his  part,  he  would  say, 
evokes  a  response  on  the  part  of  God  which  works  ex- 
perience, and  experience  in  its  turn  begets  knowledge. 
A  familiar  illustration  of  this  process  is  St.  Paul,  for  the 
apostle's  insight  into  divine  things  grew  in  the  first 
instance  out  of  his  inner  experiences.  Nor  is  it  relevant 
to  object  that  a  knowledge  like  this  is  impossible :  in  these 
matters  logical  argumentation  will  neither  show  what 
is  possible  nor  what  is  not  possible ;  we  must  just  consider 
the  facts  and  draw  our  conclusions  from  them.  Now  the 
case  of  religious  knowledge  does  not  stand  alone.  The 
genius  of  the  artist  or  the  poet,  working  on  a  basis  of 
profound  sympathy  with  the  object,  develops  a  knowledge 
which  is  intuitive  rather  than  logical.  Nor  does  any 
amount  of  detailed  information  about  a  bygone  age  enable 
a  great  writer  to  recreate  its  life  for  us  with  convincing 
power :  he  must  have  the  insight  born  of  sympathy.  So 
too  in  practical  life,  sympathy  and  fellowship  between 
human  souls  beget  a  knowledge  of  the  one  by  the  other 
which  is  not  gained  by  processes  of  reasoning  and  is  yet 
real.  And  it  is  a  truism  to  say  that  experience  of  life 
is  the  source  of  a  discernment  which  cannot  be  won  by 
mere  intellectual  keenness.  A  great  drama  has  a  fulness  of 
meaning  for  the  man  of  mature  years,  who  has  tasted  the 
joys  and  sorrows  of  the  world,  which  it  cannot  have  for 
the  youth.  The  words  are  the  same,  but  the  message 
they  impart  is  different :  the  elder  man,  interpreting  them 
through  his  wider  experience,  finds  in  them  a  deeper 


RELIGIOUS   AND   EMPIRICAL   KNOWLEDGE        313 

significance.  Here  then  we  have  a  sympathetic  discern- 
ment, which  is  the  outcome  of  life  developing  in  us  the 
appreciation  of  values ;  apart  from  life- experience,  man 
cannot  fully  know  himself  and  fairly  judge  his  fellows. 
The  knowledge  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  may  be 
called  experimental,  and  it  is  the  kind  of  knowledge  the 
religious  man  claims  to  have  of  the  object  of  his  rever- 
ence. It  rests  on  spiritual  sympathy  and  communion,  and 
develops  into  the  knowledge  of  practical  acquaintance  and 
appreciation,  tempered  by  the  feeling  of  familiarity  and 
confidence.  And  if  it  be  true  that  there  is  a  wisdom  and 
discernment  that  issue  out  of  life-experience,  the  claim 
of  the  religious  man  to  possess  a  practical  knowledge  of 
God  ought  not  to  be  lightly  dismissed.  No  fair  judgment 
of  what  the  experience  can  yield  is  possible  apart  from  the 
experience  itself ;  and  to  the  individual  who  has  it,  the 
insight  it  gives  seems  real  and  satisfying,  and  he  needs  no 
better  assurance.  "  I  know  in  whom  I  have  trusted " : 
"  I  sought  the  Lord,  and  he  helped  me " :  this  is  the 
confident  acquaintance  of  the  religious  soul.  But  though 
the  spiritual  worshipper  finds  the  witness  of  his  own  ex- 
perience sufficient,  the  very  strength  of  his  practical  con- 
viction and  the  feelings  which  are  linked  with  it,  urge  him  • 
to  claim  theoretical  validity  for  the  object  of  his  faith. 
This  raises  the  question  how  far  a  claim  to  be  true 
theoretically  can  be  justified  on  the  ground  of  an  inward 
and  personal  experience.  There  is  something,  it  is  said, 
intimate  and  private  in  this  personal  experience,  and  it 
lacks  the  objectivity  and  universality  of  theoretical  know- 
ledge. In  the  face  of  the  varieties  and  fluctuations  of 
inner  experience  among  individuals,  caution,  we  admit,  is 
necessary  in  drawing  general  conclusions  from  it.  Many 
will  feel  that  a  broader  and  firmer  basis  is  desirable  than 
purely  individual  experience  can  supply.  Such  a  basis 
might  be  won,  if  it  could  be  shown  that  the  experience 
of  the  individual  was  part  of  a  wider  and  a  historic 
experience  which  maintains  and  reproduces  itself  from 
age  to  age.  Undoubtedly  a  consistent  historic  testimony, 


314  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

if  such  can  be  proved  to  exist,  would  be  much  more 
convincing  than  the  witness  of  isolated  individuals.  For 
the  normal  character  of  the  religious  experience  would  be 
assured  by  this  cumulative  testimony.  This  is  not  the 
place  for  a  psychological  inquiry  of  the  kind,  but  I  shall 
touch  the  question  at  issue  so  far  as  to  ask,  whether  the 
study  of  historic  religious  experience  yields  an  adequate 
insight  into  the  meaning  and  ideal  of  religion. 

(b)  The  Religious  Ideal  and  Historic  Experience. 

By  the  religious  ideal  I  mean  the  true  nature  of  re- 
ligion, the  idea  of  what  religion  ought  to  be.  The  religious 
consciousness  moves  in  the  realm  of  values.  Value-judg- 
ments presuppose  and  rest  on  a  Supreme  Value,  and  this 
plays  an  important  part  in  defining  the  religious  world- 
view  and  shaping  the  ideal  of  religion.  Life  and  its 
meaning  for  us  will  always  depend  on  what  we  conceive 
to  be  best  and  most  important,  that  is  to  say,  on  our 
conception  of  value.  Now  the  spiritual  values,  and  so  the 
religious  ideal,  are  beyond  doubt  an  outgrowth  of  historic 
experience,  and  have  been  gradually  defined  in  the  process 
of  human  development.  They  issue  from  the  nature  of 
man  himself,  and  are  the  expression  of  his  perennial  needs 
and  desires.  And  human  nature  can  only  be  understood 
through  its  actual  working,  through  the  way  in  which  it 
has  developed  itself  in  the  historic  process.  A  purely 
rationalistic  or  a  priori  conception  of  what  is  the  highest 
and  best  religion  for  man,  would  remain  quite  a  vague  and 
formal  test  which  would  not  decide  anything ;  to  have 
any  worth  it  would  require  to  be  filled  out  and  modified 
by  experience.  Moreover,  those  who  adopt  this  a  priori 
method  make  the  mistake  of  arguing  from  human  nature 
as  if  it  were  a  fixed  magnitude,  everywhere  and  always 
the  same,  instead  of  a  developing  reality  which,  in  the 
process  of  developing,  gradually  gives  meaning  and  content 
to  the  religious  ideal.  The  religious  nature  of  man  only 
reveals  itself  in  its  development.  Any  attempt  to  define 


THE    RELIGIOUS    IDEAL    AND    EXPERIENCE          315 

the  essence  of  religion  apart  from  the  realisation  of  religion 
in  history,  will  only  yield  an  abstract  and  impracticable 
conception,  like  the  '  religion  of  nature '  excogitated  by 
the  English  Deists. 

Objections  have  been  taken  to  the  attempt  to  reach 
the  true  nature  or  ideal  of  religion  from  the  study  of  its 
history.     Of  course,  if  you  insist  on  identifying  religion 
with  a  system  of  universal  and  rational  truths,  it  is  plaus-  -7 
ible  to  argue  that  these  do  not  depend  for  their  validity 
on    historical    experience.       One    recalls    the    oft    quoted 
saying    of    Lessing :    "  Contingent    truths  of   history  can 
never    prove    eternal  truths    of   reason."     And    alongside 
this  saying  we  may  set  the  remark  of  Fichte :  "  Not  the 
historical  but  the  metaphysical  makes  religion."     People 
now  have  mostly   lost   their    faith  in  an    eternally  valid 
system  of  metaphysics,  and  not  unnaturally.     The  mistake 
in  the  present  case  lay  in  the  failure  to  see  that  a  living  % 
and  spiritual  religion  is  essentially  a  historic  development,-* 
and  grows  out  of  the  past  like   a  plant  out  of  the  soil." 
Herder  recognised  this,  for  he  said :  "  Fact  is  the  ground 
of  all  that  is  divine  in  religion,  and  religion  can  only  be 
presented  in  history,  in  truth  it  must  become  a  continuous 
and  living  history."     Nor  can  any  one  study  the  working 
of  one  of  the  higher  religions,  like  Christianity,  without 
realising  that  it  represents  a  growing  experience,  mediated  • 
by  great  personalities  and  maintained  and  carried  forward  ' 
by  the  movement  of  the  historic  life.1     One  thinks  of  the 
central   and  enduring  importance  of  Christ  for  Christian 
experience,  and  of  the   value  of    great  and    commanding 
figures  like  Paul,  Augustine,  and  Luther.     Their  influence 
is  a  spiritual  influence  proceeding  out  of  the  historic  life, 
and   their   value  and    significance   cannot   be    reduced   to 
certain    general    principles.       The  religious  society,   as  it 

1  A.  Dorner,  it  seems  to  me,  unduly  depreciates  the  importance  of  the 
historical  element  in  religion  when  he  suggests  that  the  notion,  that 
history  is  the  guarantee  of  salvation  and  the  foundation  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  is  only  a  transitional  point  of  view  which  must  be  tran- 
scended. Vid.  Religionsphilosophie,  p.  378. 


316  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

develops  in  time,  conserves  and  carries  forward  the 
spiritual  life,  and  enables  successive  individuals  to  share 
in  the  continuous  spiritual  experience.  By  sharing  in  the 
experience  the  individual  enters  into  the  religious  insight 
and  the  spiritual  values  which  are  the  heritage  of  the 
religious  community.  If  it  be  true  then,  as  we  have 
already  suggested,  that  there  is  a  practical  knowledge  in 
religion  which  is  the  fruit  of  personal  experience,  we  must 
recognise  that  this  personal  experience  is  stimulated  and 
nourished  by  the  wider  life  of  the  religious  organism  or 
church.  In  this  way  a  living  relation  between  the 
spiritual  present  and  the  spiritual  past  is  secured,  and  the 
religious  values  which  are  the  object  of  faith  are  main- 
tained amid  a  changing  environment.  This  continuity  of 
spiritual  experience  gives  a  weight  and  impressiveness  to 
the  claims  of  faith  greater  than  that  of  any  individual 
testimony.  Here  is  a  fact  which  no  student  of  religion 
ought  to  ignore.  There  must  be  an  inherent  vitality  in  a 
spirit  which,  though  old,  is  ever  new,  and  comes  to  utter- 
ance on  the  lips  of  many  generations. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  does  historic  experience  suffice 
to  define  the  religious  ideal  apart  from  theoretical  re- 
flexion and  criticism  ?  Does  history  simply  set  the  truth 
before  the  eyes  of  all  those  who  care  to  read  its  message  ? 
Now  here  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  a  priori  construction 
is  one  thing,  and  rational  reflexion  on  what  is  given  in 
historic  experience  is  another ;  and  to  affirm  the  inadequacy 
of  the  former  is  not  to  deny  the  value  of  the  latter.  Nor 
are  faith  and  rational  reflexion  antagonistic.  Faith  and 
thought  are  alike  outgrowths  of  the  historic  life,  and  have 
their  interests  determined  by  that  life.  The  one  cannot 
be  completely  separated  from  the  other,  since  both  are 
aspects  of  the  activity  of  the  personal  self.  There  ought 
to  be  interaction  between  them  in  the  interests  of  the 
harmony  of  the  personal  life.  And  if  we  exclude 
theoretical  reflexion,  and  assume  that  the  ideal  of  religion 
is  determined  altogether  historically,  there  are  certain 
objections  we  must  be  prepared  to  meet. 


AUTHORITY   AND   RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE         317 

In  the  first  place,  the  religious  values  differ  in  different 
religions,  and  they  are  not  exactly  the  same  in  a  single  - 
religion  at  different  epochs.  The  historic  evidence  there-  • 
fore  does  not  give  a  consistent  conclusion ;  and  if  we  are 
to  exercise,  as  we  must  do,  some  criticism  on  historical 
values,  we  shall  be  compelled  to  bring  in  considerations 
which  are  not  purely  historical.  Again,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  the  historic  process  sets  before  us  a  clear  outline  of 
the  ideal  truth  of  religion ;  for  the  essential  and  the 
secondary  are  intermingled,  and  accidents  sometimes 
obscure  the  substance.  A  work  of  criticism  and  apprecia- 
tion is  needed,  to  bring  out  the  central  values  by  reference 
to  a  standard  of  value.  This  process  can  never  be  accom- 
plished without  theoretical  thinking,  which  goes  beyond 
what  is  given  in  religious  experience,  and  considers  that 
experience  in  relation  to  the  larger  whole  of  knowledge 
and  life.  Historical  experience  in  religion,  if  we  keep 
strictly  to  it,  that  is  to  say,  does  not  present  us  with  the 
clear  and  coherent  testimony  which  is  necessary  to  the 
statement  of  truth.  The  movement  of  religious  experience 
is  of  fundamental  importance,  and  from  it  we  must  set 
out;  but  it  does  not  bear  the  truth  on  its  surface,  and 
only  reflective  thinking  can  elicit  it.  Keligion  is  more 
than  reason,  but  it  cannot  discard  reason  without  failing 
to  make  good  its  claim  to  be  objective  and  universal. 
Thought  must  exercise  its  critical  and  selective  function, 
if  the  essential  in  religion  is  to  come  to  its  own  and  receive 
due  recognition. 

(c)  Authority  and  Religious  Knowledge. 

If  reflexion  has  a  part  in  determining  the  ideal  of 
religion,  can  it  also  pass  criticism  on  the  claims  of  re- 
ligious knowledge  ?  It  is  sometimes  argued  that  religious 
knowledge  is  its  own  authority.  Are  the  adherents  of  a 
religion  then  entitled  to  demand,  on  the  strength  of  their 
spiritual  experience,  that  the  world-view  of  their  religion 
should  be  universally  accepted  ?  Eeligious  world-views 


318  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

unfortunately  differ.  On  what  grounds  are  we  to  justify 
the  demand  in  one  case  and  reject  it  in  another  ?  Let  me 
begin  the  discussion  of  these  matters  by  reminding  the 
reader,  that  the  religious  subject  always  claims  that  the 
object  of  its  reverence  is  real,  and  the  relation  in  which 
it  conceives  itself  to  stand  to  the  object  is  true.  This 
assertion  of  truth  has  an  affective  or  emotional  ground. 
"  I  feel  it  to  be  so,  and  I  cannot  doubt  it,"  so  the  individual 
exclaims,  and  this  is  sufficient  for  him.  But  psychological 
fact  does  not  spell  logical  validity.  It  is  impossible,  as 
the  psychologist  well  knows,  always  to  take  the  subjective 
feeling  of  certainty  to  be  an  adequate  guarantee  of  truth. 
A  man  cannot,  indeed,  be  mistaken  about  the  fact  that  he 
has  such  and  such  an  experience,  but  he  may  very  easily 
be  mistaken  in  regard  to  the  inferences  and  the  meaning 
he  connects  with  it.  Every  religious  experience  has  these 
implications,  and  their  truth  cannot  be  ensured  by  the 
subjective  feeling  of  certainty.  Alike  in  secular  and  in 
religious  knowledge,  experience  involves  interpretation  and 
inference,  and  it  is  here  that  the  possibility  of  error  and 
illusion  is  given.  Accordingly,  if  we  urge  the  strength 
of  personal  feeling  as  the  authority  for  the  truth  of  our 
religious  beliefs,  the  reply  will  be  made,  that  feeling  has 
not  saved  man  from  countless  mistakes  in  the  past,  and 
there  is  no  pledge  it  will  do  so  in  the  present.  Moreover, 
when  my  emotional  certainties  are  not  the  same  as  those 
of  another  individual, — a  thing  which  often  happens — it  is 
futile  to  suppose  that  my  feeling  should  be  authoritative 
for  him.  He  will  reply :  "  You  cannot  expect  I  should 
believe  as  you  do,  for  I  do  not  feel  as  you  do."  And  there 
is  nothing  more  to  be  said.  This  difficulty  emerges  more 
particularly  on  the  higher  levels  of  religious  life,  where 
religious  experience  has  a  markedly  personal  and  inward 
character.  Hence  men  have  seen  the  need  of  some  firmer 
basis  of  authority  than  can  be  gained  by  an  appeal  to  the 
feelings. 

The  great  spiritual  religions  have  sought  to  establish 
their    authority    by    claiming    to    possess   truth    divinely 


AUTHORITY   AND    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE         319 

revealed.  This  at  least  is  true  of  Judaism,  Christianity, 
and  Islam.  And  the  possibility  of  a  revelation  must  be 
admitted  by  all  those  who  accept,  or  even  by  those  who 
do  not  reject,  the  theistic  conception  of  the  universe.  If 
the  human  spirit  is  intimately  related  to  the  divine,  and 
there  is  interaction  between  them,  it  may  surely  be  that 
there  is  a  communication  of  knowledge  to  man  on  the  part 
of  God.  This  revelation  would  not  take  the  form  of  an 
imparting  of  information  from  without,  but  would  rather 
consist  in  the  heightened  spiritual  consciousness  which  gives 
birth  to  insight.  Eevelation,  in  other  words,  would  be 
inward  and  spiritual :  in  any  other  form  it  could  only  be 
secondary  and  derivative.  Yet  though  we  grant  revelation 
is  a  fact,  still  it  is  realised  through  human  media,  and  the 
difficulty  will  always  be  to  disentangle  the  divine  elements 
from  the  human,  and  to  determine  what  is  truly  authorita- 
tive. In  the  historic  working  out  of  a  religion  it  was 
natural  that  the  principle  of  authority  should  be  made  to 
cover  a  wider  and  wider  field :  the  records  of  religion,  the 
system  of  dogmatic  theology,  and  the  organisation  of  the 
church  were  all  placed  beneath  its  shelter  and  protection. 
To  those  who  ventured  to  doubt  and  criticise,  the  answer 
was  ready :  "  The  authority  is  not  human  but  divine." 
These  claims  would  not  bear  close  examination ;  and  those 
who  were  not  able  in  every  case  to  admit  the  reality  of 
the  authority  invoked,  but  were  not  willing  to  abandon 
the  principle,  had  to  face  the  problem  of  distinguishing 
the  divine  from  the  human  in  the  content  of  religion. 
Now  that  what  is  divine  is  self-evident  no  one  will  assert 
who  knows  anything  of  the  history  of  religion,  and  the 
controversies  over  the  essentials  of  religion.  To  call  in 
reason  to  decide  what  is  human  and  what  is  divine  is  to 
admit  that  reason  has  a  function  in  determining  the  truth 
of  religion.  Those  who  refuse  to  concede  this  right  to 
reason  must  fall  back  on  the  witness  of  feeling  manifested 
in  the  strength  of  personal  conviction.  "  This  is  an 
authoritative  truth  because  I  feel  it,  I  personally  experi- 
ence it,  to  be  so."  A  recent  theologian  has  declared  that 


320  RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE 

nothing  can  be  surer  than  personal  experience,  and  this,  of 
course,  is  true  if  it  merely  refers  to  our  awareness  of  the 
experience.  But  it  is  not  true,  as  we  have  already  pointed 
out,  if  you  are  to  include  the  interpretations  you  put  on 
the  experience  and  the  inferences  you  draw  from  it.  The 
writer  in  question  has  to  admit  that  subjective  illusions  do 
occur  in  religion  as  elsewhere,  and  he  seeks  a  corrective 
for  them  in  the  wider  experience  of  the  Christian  society.1 
And  no  one  will  dispute  that  historic  experience  is  a  better 
test  than  individual  feeling.  But,  as  we  have  already 
argued,  historic  experience  taken  simply  by  itself  offers  no 
adequate  criterion  of  religious  validity.  History  presents 
us  with  the  materials  for  forming  a  judgment,  but  we  have 
to  bring  to  history  the  discriminating  and  appreciative 
mind.  And  if  you  are  to  evaluate  the  body  of  experience 
which  lies  behind  a  particular  doctrine  in  order  to 
determine  its  authority,  you  must  critically  test  the 
experience  by  bringing  it  into  relation  with  the  larger 
world  of  knowledge  and  life. 

There  will  be  an  opportunity  of  dealing  with  some  of 
the  issues  raised  by  the  problem  of  authority  in  religious 
knowledge  in  the  following  chapter,  where  we  shall  discuss 
the  problem  of  religious  truth.  But  I  think  it  can  be 
inferred  from  what  has  been  said,  that  the  idea  of  a 
merely  external  authority  in  religion  cannot  be  consistently 
defended.  After  all,  the  force  of  an  appeal  to  such  an 
authority  lies  in  the  recognition  which  it  evokes,  and  an 
authority  to  be  spiritually  valuable  must  be  accepted  by 
the  spirit.  Now  it  is  vain  to  expect  that  all  the  doctrines 
based  on  the  testimony  of  a  church  or  of  sacred  writings 
will  be  accepted  in  this  way ;  for  they  do  not  form  a 
perfectly  coherent  whole,  and  in  the  interests  of  harmony 
it  is  necessary  to  select  and  criticise.  When  we  proceed  to 
select  what  shall  really  be  authoritative  for  our  spiritual 
life,  our  own  sense  of  value  will  decide ;  and  this  means 
that  the  final  court  of  appeal  is  within  rather  than  without, 
in  the  witness  of  the  spirit  rather  than  in  an  external 

1  Lipsius,  Glauben  und  Wissen,  pp.  57-60. 


AUTHORITY    AND    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE       321 

authority.  The  inward  response  alone  will  make  the 
outward  claim  effective.  Is  not  this  in  substance,  it  will 
be  said,  to  reduce  the  principle  of  authority  in  religion 
to  the  interior  witness  and  assent  of  the  individual  soul  ? 
This  is  not  a  fair  inference.  If  authority  is  to  be  spiritual, 
it  can  only  be  actual  in  the  personal  consciousness  of 
individuals.  But  an  individual,  by  his  spiritual  act  of 
assent,  does  not  confer  authority  in  the  larger  sense  upon 
a  doctrine.  The  doctrine,  we  must  remember,  comes  to 
the  individual  from  the  historic  past  of  religion,  and  it 
represents  a  historical  value.  And  while  the  individual 
makes  the  value  living  and  operative  in  the  present,  he 
cannot  be  said  to  create  it :  it  would  be  truer  to  say  that  it 
goes  to  create  the  content  of  his  spiritual  life.  In  fact, 
the  principle  of  authority  is  neither  purely  subjective  nor 
purely  objective :  it  is  subjectively  realised,  but  depends 
on  objective  conditions.  The  witness  of  the  spirit  divorced 
from  the  historic  life  of  religion  furnishes  no  stable  basis  of 
religious  truth.  And  the  consistency  of  religious  doctrines 
with  theoretical  knowledge  still  remains  to  be  settled. 

The  sufficiency  of  subjective  or  inward  discernment 
of  religious  truth  can,  no  doubt,  be  plausibly  urged.  The 
principle  of  spiritual  religion  lies  in  the  relation  of  personal 
spirits  to  one  another,  and  this,  it  is  argued,  quite  tran- 
scends the  purview  of  scientific  thinking.  God,  the  great 
object  of  religious  knowledge,  is  only  revealed  through 
piety.  He  is  not  an  outward  fact  to  be  observed,  and  he 
cannot  be  demonstrated  by  the  logical  reason.1  There  is 
much  in  this  contention  which  is  true  and  important, 
but  it  does  not  suffice  to  show  that  the  inward  witness  of 
the  spirit  alone  is  the  adequate  sanction  of  religious 
knowledge.  Those  who  hold  this  theory  forget  what  the 
religious  mind  implies  and  postulates.  No  religious  person 
supposes  that  his  religious  knowledge  is  valid  only  for 
himself.  Faith  has  a  cognitive  aspect,  and  it  claims  to 
have  a  cognitive  value.  The  world-view  which  faith 
develops  the  religious  man  asserts  has  a  theoretical  as  well 
1  So  A.  Sabatier,  Phil,  de  la  Religion,  p.  376  ff. 


322  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

as  a  religious  value.  The  mind  refuses  to  divorce  practical 
and  theoretical  truth  from  one  another,  and  to  treat  them 
as  belonging  to  alien  spheres.  Nor  can  it  be  otherwise, 
since  the  realms  of  faith  and  knowledge  are  the  outcome 
of  the  same  personal  life  and  reveal  the  work  and  interest 
of  the  one  personality.  That  faith  and  knowledge  should 
not  act  and  react  on  one  another  would  be  a  psychological 
impossibility:  the  unity  of  consciousness  is  compatible 
with  distinctions  but  not  with  departmental  divisions. 
The  proof  of  this  intercourse  is  seen  in  the  influence  the 
growth  of  knowledge  has  on  the  content  of  religious  faith, 
and  in  the  response  of  the  religious  spirit  to  changes  in  the 
intellectual  environment.  It  is  likewise  apparent  in  the 
way  in  which  faith  strives  to  show  its  consistency  with 
the  assured  results  of  science,  and  seeks  in  theoretical 
knowledge  a  support  and  confirmation  for  its  values.  In 
so  doing  the  religious  spirit  instinctively  feels  that  it  is 
fortifying  and  securing  its  own  position.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  theoretical  knowledge  is  at  open  discord  with 
a  doctrine  of  religion,  faith  in  the  doctrine  is  undoubtedly 
weakened.1  It  is  true,  but  it  is  not  relevant,  to  say  that 
the  objects  of  spiritual  faith  are  not  capable  of  proof  in 
the  scientific  sense.  For  objects  which  are  held  by  faith, 
when  considered  in  their  implications,  are  susceptible  in 
various  degrees  of  harmonious  or  discordant  relations  with 
the  body  of  scientific  knowledge.  To  take  an  illustration. 
The  religious  idea  of  God  can  involve  a  conception  of  his 
nature  and  way  of  acting  which  may  or  may  not  harmonise 
with  scientific  knowledge.  There  is  a  conflict,  for  instance, 
when  religious  people  declare  that  a  plague  is  solely  due 
to  the  wrath  of  the  Deity,  while  men  of  science  show  it 
is  the  consequence  of  flagrant  disregard  of  sanitary  laws. 
When  there  is  a  discord,  the  human  mind,  by  its  very 


1  This  may  be  denied,  and  we  may  be  reminded  of  the  sayings,  credo 
quia  absurdum  est,  and  credo  quia  impossible  est.  But  while  it  is  true  that 
there  is  an  intense  and  fanatical  conviction  upon  which  reason  can  make  no 
impression,  the  statement  in  the  text  holds  good  in  the  long  run,  and  of 
individuals  on  the  whole. 


PROBLEMS    OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE  323 

nature  and  tendency,  seeks,  if  it  can,  to  resolve  the  dis- 
cord into  a  harmony.  And  this  because  man  demands  to 
be  in  harmony  with  himself.  Though  it  is  necessary  to 
distinguish  spiritual  from  theoretical  knowing,  they 
cannot  be  sharply  separated,  and  both  are  factors  in  the 
working  out  of  a  comprehensive  end.  For  all  knowledge 
ought  to  subserve  the  realisation  of  the  good,  and,  whether 
in  its  scientific  or  religious  aspect,  it  has  its  goal  in  a 
complete  and  harmonious  life.  This  being  so,  authoritative 
value  in  religion  will  not  depend  on  any  single  principle, 
nor  can  it  be  decided  on  any  simple  and  clear-cut  method. 
It  involves  a  harmony  of  several  elements,  and  is  a  matter 
of  degree.  The  degree  will  be  the  greater,  in  the  measure 
that  religious  knowledge  unites  harmoniously  with  other 
human  activities  in  realising  human  good. 

To  put  the  conclusions  of  this  section  clearly  and 
briefly.  Eeligious  knowledge  issues  from  personal  experi- 
ence. This  experience,  however,  must  be  corrected  and 
confirmed  by  the  wider  experience  of  the  historic  religious 
community.  Thus  the  religious  man's  knowledge  is 
personally  realised  and  historically  grounded.  Yet  not 
even  on  these  terms  has  such  knowledge  finally  vindicated 
its  authority.  To  this  end  spiritual  knowledge  must  be 
brought  into  relation  with  the  body  of  theoretical  know- 
ledge, and  the  two  must  at  least  be  capable  of  being 
consistently  thought  together.  The  more  fully  these 
conditions  are  implemented,  the  more  completely  is 
authority  secured. 

C. — SPECIAL  PEOBLEMS  OF  EELIGIOUS  KNOWLEDGE. 

No  knowledge  is  complete,  and  religious  knowledge  has 
obvious  limitations.  However  convinced  a  man  may  be 
in  his  religious  faith,  he  cannot  but  realise  that  faith  does 
not  completely  reveal  to  him  the  nature  of  the  Object  he 
reveres.  The  points  of  light  stand  out  to  his  vision 
against  an  intervening  darkness.  Mystery  is  never  absent 
from  religion :  it  forms  an  element  of  the  atmosphere  in 


324  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

which  the  religious  spirit  lives  and  breathes.  A  religion 
without  mystery  would  be  a  contradiction.  Eenan  has 
remarked :  "  A  religion  as  clear  as  geometry  would  arouse 
no  love  and  no  hate."  Even  those  who  emphasise  the 
scope  and  power  of  human  knowledge  do  not  dispute  the 
fact  that  there  is  much  of  which  man  is  ignorant,  much 
that  he  is  never  likely  to  know.  "The  scheme  of  Provi- 
dence," says  Bishop  Butler,  "  the  ways  and  works  of  God, 
are  too  vast,  of  too  large  extent  for  our  capacities."  Yet 
the  fact  of  this  ignorance  does  not  make  Butler  mistrust  or 
depreciate  our  knowledge  of  divine  things.  "  If  a  man 
were  to  walk  by  twilight,  must  he  not  follow  his  eyes  as 
much  as  if  he  were  in  broad  day  and  clear  sunshine  ?  Or 
if  he  were  obliged  to  take  a  journey  by  night,  would  he 
not  give  heed  to  any  light  shining  in  the  darkness,  till  the 
day  should  break,  and  the  day  star  arise  ? " l  This  is  the 
right  ground  on  which  to  stand,  for  it  is  equally  removed 
from  the  pride  of  absolute  knowledge  and  from  the 
despair  of  agnosticism.  This  is  the  sane  attitude  in  which 
to  deal  with  the  problem  of  religious  doubt. 

(a)  The  Significance  of  Religious  Doubt. 

Alike  in  the  logical  and  in  the  historical  order  of 
development,  doubt  presupposes  belief.  When  we  doubt 
or  deny  we  must  have  some  positive  statement  before  the 
mind  which  we  call  in  question,  and  we  do  so  in  virtue 
of  some  other  judgment  which  we  affirm  or  believe.  In 
the  evolution  of  religion,  doubt  as  a  distinct  tendency  can 
hardly  be  said  to  exist  at  the  primitive  stage,  for  man's 
critical  faculty  is  dormant  and  belief  is  natural  and  easy. 
The  naive  trust  or  credulity  of  early  man  is  not  readily 
shaken,  and  survives  many  disappointments.  Even  the 
later  period  in  which  religious  imagination  was  building 
up  polytheistic  systems  was,  on  the  whole,  free  from 
denials  and  questionings.  But  the  development  of  the 
reflective  spirit  inevitably  brought  about  a  strain  between 

1  Sermon,  Upon  the  Ignorance  of  Man. 


SIGNIFICANCE   OF    RELIGIOUS   DOUBT  325 

thought  and  imagination,  and  the  result  of  this  tension 
was  religious  doubt.  The  old  Greek  and  Eoman  religions 
furnish  apt  illustrations  of  the  emergence  of  this  process, 
and  of  the  disintegrating  influence  it  exercises  on  a  system 
of  beliefs.  The  process  of  questioning  once  begun  does  not 
cease :  the  spirit  that  doubts  and  denies  persists,  and  forms 
an  element  in  human  culture  against  which  all  the  higher 
religions  have  to  contend.  Various  causes  may  provoke  a 
special  activity  of  scepticism  at  a  particular  epoch,  but 
more  often  it  will  be  a  combination  of  causes.  Keligion  is 
far  older  than  science,  and  the  doctrines  of  a  venerable 
religion  will  always  offer  points  of  attack  for  the  shafts  of 
sceptical  criticism.  There  come  times,  too,  in  the  evolution 
of  culture,  when  the  religious  life  beats  feebly  and  faith 
sinks  low :  disillusionment  is  rife,  and  the  old  spiritual 
values  themselves  become  objects  of  doubt.  Men  begin  to 
count  as  loss  what  their  forefathers  deemed  to  be  gain. 
Seen  through  the  gloom  diffused  by  pessimism,  the  old 
ideals  become  blurred  and  the  ancient  certainties  are  no 
longer  sure : 

"Ah,  what  a  dusty  answer  gets  the  soul 
When  hot  for  certainties  in  this  our  life ! " 

And  when  there  is  the  mood  to  doubt,  there  emerge  reasons 
and  reasons  for  doubting.  The  critic  notes  the  blind 
traditionalism  which  hampers  religion,  and  points  to  the 
conflict  of  creeds  to  show  how  the  supposed  truths  of  faith 
clash  with  one  another.  Or  perhaps  he  moralises  over  the 
changes  of  belief  which  mark  the  evolution  of  a  religion, 
and  draws  the  lesson  that  no  belief  can  be  reckoned  fixed 
and  sure. 

On  the  philosophic  side  a  justification  for  doubt  has 
been  found  in  the  theory  of  the  necessary  limitations  of 
human  knowledge.  Long  ago  Thomas  Aquinas  declared 
that  an  understanding  of  the  Creator  transcended  the 
capacities  of  the  creature :  comprehendere  deum  impossible 
est  cuique  intellectui  create.  In  the  middle  of  last  century 
Hamilton,  followed  by  Mansel,  argued  that  the  human 


326  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

mind  was  inherently  incapable  of  comprehending  an 
absolute  and  unconditioned  Being,  and  faith  in  revealed 
truth  was  all  that  remained  for  man  in  this  regard.  The 
argument  of  Hamilton  and  his  disciples  has  not  carried 
conviction,  and  it  seems  to  rest  on  a  twofold  fallacy.  On 
the  one  hand,  he  erroneously  identifies  the  Infinite  with 
the  merely  unlimited  or  boundless,  and  goes  on  to  confuse 
the  fact  that  man  cannot  represent  this  infinite  with  the 
assertion  that  he  cannot  think  it.  Again,  he  confounds 
the  truism  that  all  knowledge  involves  relation  with  the 
profoundly  misleading  statement,  that  to  know  in  the  form 
of  relation  means  a  relative  or  unreal  knowledge.  Of 
course,  if  our  minds  must  proceed  by  dividing  and  relating, 
while  the  Absolute,  or  God,  is  beyond  relation, — a  great 
assumption — then  we  cannot  know  him.  Yet  the  advocates 
of  nescience  apparently  knew  enough  to  know  that  the 
Absolute  and  Infinite  existed,  and  was  necessary  to  explain 
the  finite.1  Herbert  Spencer,  who  set  out  from  the 
epistemological  premisses  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  was 
content  to  affirm  that  we  had  "  an  undefined  consciousness 
of  the  Absolute,"  though  at  the  same  time  declaring  that 
"  the  reality  underlying  appearances  is  totally  and  for  ever 
inconceivable  to  us."  Spencer  did  not,  like  Mansel,  ask 
for  an  unreasoning  faith  in  revelation,  and  his  agnosticism 
is  so  far  consistent  with  his  premisses.  But  he  mistook 
the  nature  of  the  religious  consciousness  when  he  supposed 
that  it  was  essentially  "  the  consciousness  of  an  incompre- 
hensible power."  The  epistemological  basis  of  the  agnostic 
movement  in  Hamilton,  Mansel,  and  Spencer  is  so  radically 
unsound,  that  their  conclusions  are  hopelessly  vitiated. 
An  Infinite  Being  who  does  not  enter  into  relations,  and 
cannot  be  understood  through  the  relational  form  of 
thinking,  is  a  mere  figment  of  the  philosophic  imagination. 
The  religious  mind  is  not  concerned  to  affirm  the  existence 

1  "We  know  that  unless  we  admit  the  existence  of  the  infinite,  the  ex- 
istence of  the  finite  is  inexplicable  and  contradictory  ;  and  yet  we  know  that 
the  conception  of  the  infinite  itself  appears  to  involve  contradictions  not  less 
inexplicable."  Mansel,  Metaphysics,  1866,  pp.  382-383. 


SIGNIFICANCE   OF    RELIGIOUS    DOUBT  327 

of  such  a  Being,  and  in  the  nature  of  things  could  not 
worship  it.  Eeligion,  it  has  been  truly  said,  does  not  ask 
us  to  believe  what  contradicts  thought:  it  asks  us  to 
believe  in  an  object  which  corresponds  to  the  needs  of  the 
inner  life  and  the  will,  and  does  not  contradict  thought.1 

But  if  the  plea  for  philosophic  nescience,  in  the  form 
urged  by  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  has  ceased  to  be  convincing, 
other  and  more  subtle  reasons  are  put  forward  in  behalf 
of  religious  doubt.  If  we  cannot  definitely  limit  the  sphere 
of  human  knowledge,  still,  it  is  pointed  out,  the  further 
we  depart  from  the  field  of  positive  experience  where  our 
conclusions  can  be  tested,  the  more  do  we  enter  a  region 
in  which  the  truth  of  our  judgments  is  problematical  and 
uncertain.  The  religious  consciousness,  we  are  told,  forgets 
too  readily  that  what  holds  in  the  realm  of  the  material 
and  temporal  may  not  hold  in  the  realm  of  the  spiritual 
and  eternal.  Eeligious  predicates  are  commonly  developed 
by  the  help  of  imagery,  and  in  dependence  on  traditional 
forms  which  have  not  been  critically  examined  ;  hence  there 
is  no  assurance  of  their  accuracy.  Imagination,  says  a 
recent  religious  philosopher,  is  for  religion  what  the  concept 
is  for  science ;  and  in  the  form  of  poetic  representation 
faith  asserts  what  thought  cannot  justify.2  By  its  free 
use  of  earthly  images  the  religious  mind,  in  trying  to  make 
the  divine  intelligible,  ceases  to  conceive  it  truly,  and  offers 
a  fancied  knowledge  which  covers  a  real  ignorance.  As 
the  outcome  of  this  way  of  thinking  we  have  what  may  be 
termed  a  critical  agnosticism,  which  is  based  on  the  in- 
adequacy of  human  ideas  and  analogies  to  describe  the 
supersensible  and  transcendent  world. 

Religious  doubt,  when  advocated  in  this  way,  is  more 
skilful  in  its  attack  and  more  difficult  to  parry.  It  is  so 
because  the  attacking  party  has  a  certain  amount  of  truth 
on  its  side  which  the  defenders  of  religion  cannot  afford  to 
ignore.  No  one  can  deny  that  the  claims  to  knowledge 

1  Paulsen,  Einleitung  in  die  Philosophic,  p.  345. 

2  Rauwenhoff  ( Religionsphilosophie,  pp.  474-475).     "  Die  poetische  Vor- 
stellung  1st  fur  den  Glauben,  was  der  Begriff  fur  die  Wissenschaft  ist." 


328  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

made  by  religion  have  often  failed  to  stand  the  test  of 
growing  experience  and  critical  reflexion ;  and  popular 
religion  has  sometimes  gone  to  extravagant  lengths  in 
describing  the  other  world  in  terms  of  the  present.  These 
are  cases  where  criticism  denotes  a  healthy  and  rational 
reaction.  We  can  therefore  see  that  the  pressure  of  doubt 
has  frequently  been  a  means  of  spiritual  progress,  for  it 
has  urged  men  to  advance  to  more  profound  and  adequate 
conceptions  of  spiritual  truth.  The  questioning  and 
sceptical  spirit,  springing  up  within  a  religion,  is  sometimes 
the  ferment  which  brings  about  the  transmutation  and 
development  of  a  narrow  and  traditional  creed.  The  en- 
lightened man  will  not  then  regard  religious  doubt  as 
necessarily  evil ;  it  may  be  the  instrument  of  spiritual 
progress,  and  the  occasion  through  which  religion  develops 
a  form  more  adequate  to  its  content.  But  against  the 
more  radical  forms  of  doubt  which  are  devoid  of  sympathy 
and  understanding  for  religion,  those  who  have  the  interests 
of  religion  at  heart  can  say  a  word  in  defence  of  their  faith. 
To  begin  with,  they  will  insist  that  no  claim  is  made  to 
a  complete  knowledge  on  the  part  of  faith.  All  that  the 
religious  consciousness  affirms  is,  that  it  possesses  a  real 
though  limited  knowledge  of  God  and  divine  things,  and 
this  has  been  realised  in  the  medium  of  spiritual  experience. 
If  theologians  have  sometimes  laid  claim  to  a  knowledge 
more  ample,  in  so  doing  they  have  gone  beyond  what 
the  testimony  of  religious  experience  warrants.  When 
theology,  for  instance,  expounds  the  metaphysical  attributes 
of  God,  or  unfolds  the  divine  method  of  creation,  it  has 
entered  a  region  which  is  largely  speculative,  and  where 
spiritual  experience  gives  little  support  to  its  conclusions. 
Faith  can  only  speak  of  what  falls  within  its  own  vision, 
and  it  only  reports  of  God  in  so  far  as  he  is  conceived  to 
enter  into  and  maintain  relations  with  men.  The  Christian, 
for  example,  witnesses  to  a  knowledge  in  experience  of  the 
divine  grace,  mercy,  and  love  ;  and  these  are  all  conceptions 
which  describe  the  working  of  God  in  regard  to  man. 
Religious  experience  does  not  pretend  to  furnish  a  know- 


KNOWLEDGE   AND   FAITH  329 

ledge  of  God  as  he  is  in  himself  apart  from  the  world  and 
human  spirits.  Confronted  with  this  claim  to  a  knowledge 
of  God  given  through  inner  experience,  the  agnostic  cannot 
fairly  enter  the  plea  that  this  knowledge  is  false.  For  it 
is  on  a  different  level  from  the  scientific  knowledge  on 
which  he  sets  store,  and  it  is  in  no  way  contradicted  by 
the  legitimate  conclusions  of  science.  Nor  can  he  con- 
sistently say  that  this  knowledge  is  impossible ;  for  this 
argues  a  knowledge  on  his  own  part  the  existence  of  which 
he  began  by  denying.  Personally  he  may  refuse  to  make 
the  venture  of  religious  faith,  even  though  he  retains  faith 
in  himself  and  his  method.  In  fact  the  agnostic  cannot 
banish  faith  from  human  life,  however  loath  he  may  be  to 
admit  its  claims  where  religion  is  concerned.  For  it  is  too 
deeply  rooted  in  human  nature,  too  closely  linked  with  the 
forward  outlook  of  human  life.  To  deny  the  rights  of 
faith  is  in  the  end  to  deny  the  spiritual  and  idealistic  view 
of  human  life  and  destiny.  The  idea  of  God,  faith  finds 
necessary  to  give  meaning  and  value  to  the  world  and 
human  experience.  If  we  are  to  pronounce  the  idea  of 
God,  which  has  so  profoundly  affected  human  life  and 
history,  to  be  illusory,  it  must  be  at  the  expense  of  con- 
demning what  is  highest  and  best  in  ourselves. 

(b)  Knowledge  and  Faith. 

The  line  of  argument  we  have  been  following  depends 
so  much  on  the  validity  of  faith,  that,  at  the  risk  of 
covering  ground  already  trodden,  I  will  add  a  short  state- 
ment on  the  relation  of  knowledge  to  faith.  Faith  appears 
to  occupy  a  kind  of  middle  position  in  human  life ;  it  is 
neither  purely  practical  nor  purely  theoretical,  but  some- 
thing of  both.  The  advocates  of  simplicity  who  seek  to 
reduce  faith  to  knowledge  fail,  for  faith  cannot  be  absorbed 
in  the  theoretical  process  of  knowing  without  losing  its 
specific  character.  While  the  contents  of  faith  are  taken 
to  be  theoretically  true,  they  are  not  reached  by  rational 
inferences,  but  are  maintained  in  a  practical  interest.  The 


330  RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

objects  of  faith  are  primarily  values,  values  which  evoke 
the  affective  life,  and  furnish  a  centre  around  which  the 
feelings  gather.  Faith  embraces  facts  and  their  relations 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  involved  in  the  values,  and  are 
necessary  to  support  them.  In  its  full  spiritual  develop- 
ment it  is  a  stable  attitude  of  mind,  and  a  response  of  the 
whole  personality  to  the  object.  In  this  respect  it  differs 
decidedly  from  mere  belief  or  "  opinion "  (Sofa)  in  the 
sense  of  Plato.1  The  latter  is  a  judgment  prompted  by  an 
intellectual  or  an  emotional  interest,  or  by  both,  but  which 
does  not  rest  on  systematic  insight.  On  the  level  where 
mind  moves  constantly  within  the  region  of  tradition  and 
convention  such  judgments  abound  ;  but  they  are  devoid  of 
the  stability  of  faith,  and  at  the  best  do  not  rise  higher 
than  a  partially  grounded  conviction.  Opinion  from  the 
logical  standpoint  cannot  be  taken  for  a  final  state  of 
mind;  it  points  beyond  itself,  and  forms  a  transitional 
stage  in  a  movement  to  something  more  complete  and 
satisfying.  In  practice,  however,  this  flexibility  may  be 
lost,  and  opinion  in  the  average  mind  often  hardens  into 
dogmatic  prejudice.  Beyond  question,  opinion  in  this 
sense,  or  belief  as  we  call  it,  figures  largely  on  all  levels 
of  religious  experience.  Even  on  the  highest  level  it  is 
frequently  found,  and  expresses  itself  in  the  judgments  of 
those  for  whom  religion  represents  the  influence  of  custom, 
convention,  and  education,  rather  than  a  personal  and 
inward  life.  Faith,  on  the  contrary,  is  an  act  of  the 
spiritual  and  self-conscious  person,  who  affirms  the  religious 
values,  and  God  the  supreme  Value,  to  be  essential  to  his 
own  soul  and  to  the  meaning  of  the  world.  It  is  a  move- 
ment of  the  self,  conscious  and  free,  which  expresses  the 
needs  and  states  the  postulates  of  the  spiritual  life.  Faith 
so  conceived  is  neither  partial  nor  wavering,  but  speaks  of 
full  assurance  and  an  abiding  ideal 

Human  personality  is  a  unitary  whole,  and  man  feels 
that  the  object  which  satisfies  the  spiritual  life  should 
justify  itself  to  the  theoretical  consciousness.  The  Good 

1  Cf.  Siebeck,  Religionsphilosophie,  pp.  166-168. 


KNOWLEDGE   AND    FAITH  331 

he  loves  and  desires  must  also  be  the  True.  Yet  we 
cannot  meet  this  demand  after  the  fashion  in  which  we 
verify  a  scientific  hypothesis  for  which  truth  is  claimed ; 
this  would  mean  that  faith  could  be  resolved  into  know- 
ledge and  so  rendered  superfluous.  We  seem  then  to  be 
face  to  face  with  the  dilemma,  that  faith  claims  theoretical 
validity  for  its  object  and  at  the  same  time  implies  that 
the  object  cannot  be  theoretically  known.  It  may  help  us 
to  resolve  this  difficulty,  if  we  consider  how  knowledge  and 
faith  relate  themselves  to  one  another  in  the  expanding 
process  of  human  experience. 

Knowledge  and  faith  are  alike  movements  which 
develop  within  the  wider  whole  of  life,  and  are  the  out- 
come of  the  personal  and  purposive  activity  of  man. 
Having  this  much  in  common,  they  are  otherwise  different 
in  their  outlook  and  way  of  working.  Knowledge  proceeds 
by  discovering  relations  between  the  parts  of  experience, 
by  establishing  the  presence  of  order  and  connexion  in 
what  is  given,  and  so  brings  about  articulation  and  system 
in  what  at  first  seemed  arbitrary  and  confused.  An 
individual  connexion,  say  of  cause  and  effect,  we  come  to 
know  as  an  instance  of  a  general  principle,  and  complex 
details  of  fact  are  understood  when  they  are  shown  to  be 
illustrations  of  a  more  general  law  or  uniformity.  The 
process  of  knowing  is  therefore  a  process  of  eliciting  the 
connexions  of  things  and  relating  them  to  one  another. 
Conceptual  thinking,  which  defines  these  relations,  at  the 
same  time  generalises  them,  and  the  individual  instance 
or  connexion  is  treated  as  the  expression  of  a  universal 
principle.  So  the  scientific  mind  moves  in  a  world  of 
universal  meanings  where  the  rule  holds :  "  once  true 
always  true."  The  ideal  of  knowledge  is  rationality,  or 
the  insight  into  the  connexion  of  elements  within  a  syste- 
matic whole,  in  virtue  of  which  we  can  construe  each 
element  through  its  relation  to  the  other  elements  and  to 
the  whole  of  which  it  is  a  part.  Needless  to  say  this  ideal 
remains  an  ideal,  for  the  human  mind  only  succeeds  very 
partially  in  establishing  connexion  and  universal  meaning 


332  RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE 

in  experience.  The  work  of  rationalising  ends  with  un- 
rationalised  elements ;  the  individual  is  not  exhausted  by 
the  sum  of  its  relations,  and  the  process  of  assigning  causes 
and  conditions  concludes  with  a  confession  of  ignorance. 
Hence  the  idea  of  completeness  and  system,  which  inspires 
knowledge,  is  not  itself  realised  by  knowledge  but  is  held 
by  faith.  That  the  universe  is  a  totality  or  system  which 
has  meaning  in  every  part  is  more  than  we  can  prove, 
though  in  the  light  of  what  we  do  know  we  may  have  a 
legitimate  faith  that  it  is  so. 

Knowledge  is  the  outcome  of  personal  activity;  but 
the  relation  of  elements  to  one  another  in  knowledge  wears 
an  impersonal  aspect,  and  appears  to  the  knower  to  be 
something  independent  which  he  has  to  accept  apart  from 
its  personal  interest  and  value  to  himself.  Dispassionate 
regard  for  facts  is  said  to  be  a  feature  of  the  scientific 
mind,  and  the  'servant  and  interpreter  of  nature*  must 
beware  of  the  '  idols  of  the  cave/  In  contrast  to  this  is 
the  character  of  faith.  The  man  of  faith  apprehends  the 
object,  not  with  the  single  desire  to  know,  but  in  order 
to  find  satisfaction  in  it :  in  other  words,  interests  of  feeling 
and  ideas  of  value  are  central  and  decisive.  On  this 
account  the  content  of  faith  stands  in  a  more  personal 
and  intimate  relation  to  the  self  than  the  content  of 
knowledga  The  object  of  religious  faith  is  the  good  which 
corresponds  to  the  needs  of  the  inner  life.  That  good  the 
soul  cannot  discover  among  the  conditioned  things  of  ex- 
perience ;  so  it  goes  beyond  the  given  world  and  reaches 
its  goal  in  the  transcendent  and  unconditioned,  in  the  idea 
of  God  as  supreme  Good  and  supreme  End.  Faith  so 
conceived  is  an  act  of  personal  freedom  and  choice,  and 
expresses  the  ultimate  meaning  which  the  personal  self 
finds  in  experience.  Thus  faith  follows  a  very  different 
path  from  knowledge:  it  seems  to  attain  its  goal  easily, 
while  the  other  spells  out  its  way  laboriously  and  stops 
short  on  the  journey.  Nevertheless  the  one  is  not  really 
antagonistic  to  the  other.  If  personal  interest  is  dominant 
in  faith,  it  also  guides  the  process  of  knowing.  Knowledge 


KNOWLEDGE   AND   FAITH  333 

itself  is  stimulated  by  faith,  and  ends  with  faith  in  the 
ideal  which  has  inspired  its  partial  achievement.  Faith 
again,  in  the  interests  of  spiritual  life,  goes  beyond  know- 
ledge in  order  to  find  a  final  value  and  meaning  in  the 
world.  In  claiming  theoretical  validity  for  its  object,  faith 
admits  its  affinity  with  knowledge.  Both  movements  issue 
from  the  living  self  as  it  reacts  on  the  experienced  world, 
and  are  complementary  aspects  of  its  purposive  activity. 
What  is  important  to  the  one  cannot  in  the  end  be  in- 
different to  the  other.  Knowledge  and  faith  alike  subserve 
the  struggle  of  the  human  spirit  to  its  divine  goal,  and 
they  should  interact  with  one  another  in  the  cause  of 
spiritual  progress. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

MODES  OF  EELIGIOUS  KNOWLEDGE  AND  THE 
PEOBLEM  OF  TRUTH. 

THE  discussions  in  the  previous  chapters  have  now  to 
be  supplemented  by  an  examination  of  certain  general 
characteristics  of  religious  knowing.  These  are  the 
principles  or  methods  on  which  the  religious  subject 
proceeds,  when  it  apprehends  its  object  and  develops  a 
religious  view  of  the  world.  These  methods  are  certainly 
not  the  exclusive  property  of  religion,  but,  as  I  have  said, 
they  play  a  characteristic  part  in  religion,  and  much 
depends  on  the  validity  which  attaches  to  them.  For 
if  it  should  be  found  that  they  are  inapplicable,  or  suffer 
from  incurable  defects,  the  religious  view  of  the  world,  as 
it  is  commonly  understood,  could  no  longer  be  maintained. 
I  refer  more  particularly  to  the  use  of  analogy,  the  teleo- 
logical  interpretation  of  things,  and  the  interpretation  of 
experience  in  terms  of  value.  All  of  these  methods  are 
employed  in  the  practical  activity  of  the  religious  spirit, 
and  their  validity  is  presupposed  in  the  claim  to  truth 
made  for  religious  ideas.  So  this  question  of  validity 
opens  out  into  the  wider  one  of  the  nature  of  truth  in 
religion  and  the  mode  of  testing  it. 

A. — THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ANALOGY. 

The  word  analogy  is  loosely  employed  to  denote  a 
similarity.  In  its  logical  use  it  has  come  to  signify  the 
form  of  argument  which,  in  virtue  of  a  general  resemblance 
in  features  between  two  objects,  concludes  that  the  co- 
existence of  certain  characters  in  one  of  them  points  to  a 

334 


THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   ANALOGY  335 

like  coexistence  in  the  other.  The  Aristotelian  logic  treats 
analogical  inference  as  an  imperfect  induction,  or  an 
argument  from  example.  And  in  its  essence  analogical 
reasoning  is  probable  rather  than  strictly  demonstrative. 
J.  S.  Mill  has  pointed  out  in  his  Logic  (Bk.  in.  chap,  xx.), 
that  this  type  of  reasoning  always  presupposes  we  do 
not  know  the  perceived  points  of  resemblance  to  be 
connected  by  general  laws  with  the  things  which  are 
inferred :  if  we  actually  knew  this,  the  inference  would 
cease  to  be  analogical ;  for  it  would  amount  to  proof.  In 
current  speech,  however,  the  word  analogy  takes  an  extended 
application,  and  we  speak  of  an  analogy  between  things  or 
provinces  of  investigation  when  we  mean  a  similarity.  In 
this  wider  sense  we  conceive  the  principle  of  analogy  to 
obtain  in  religious  thought ;  and  so  conceived  the  principle 
is  of  great  scope  and  significance  in  the  working  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  In  general  the  religious  mind 
proceeds  on  the  assumption  that  there  is  a  similarity 
between  the  human  and  the  divine,  so  that  attributes 
which  are  predicated  of  the  one  can  be  predicated  of  the 
other.  Yet  to  the  critical  and  reflecting  mind  this  applica- 
tion of  the  principle  appears  to  be  attended  by  special 
difficulties  and  dangers.  The  cogency  of  an  analogy 
depends  on  the  degree  of  probability  that  the  similarity 
we  predicate  between  objects  rests  on  an  identity  of 
principle  or  a  common  law.  But  if  we  apply  the  human 
analogy  to  the  divine  nature,  we  do  so  in  the  knowledge 
that  a  perfect  identity  between  the  two  natures  is  excluded : 
in  the  religious  relation  there  must  be  difference  as  well 
as  likeness.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  this  argument  must 
not  be  pressed  too  far,  and  the  use  of  analogy  in  religion 
can  be  justified.  Piety  itself  postulates  a  general  similarity 
between  man  and  the  object  of  his  faith,  and  this  similarity 
encourages  the  belief  that  specific  qualities  in  man  have 
some  counterpart  in  God. 

Let  us  now  consider  more  in  detail  how  the  principle 
works  in  the  sphere  of  religion.  Through  analogy  man 
habitually  thinks  of  his  deity.  He  draws  the  outline  of 


336  MODES    OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

his  gods  after  his  own  image.  The  qualities  he  recognises 
in  himself  he  transfers  to  the  divine  object,  and  thus 
interprets  it  in  the  light  of  his  own  self-consciousness.1 
Hence  the  anthropomorphism  which  runs  through  religion 
is  an  illustration  of  the  use  of  analogy :  it  is  a  token  how 
persistently  man  depicts  the  things  in  heaven  after  the 
pattern  of  the  things  on  earth.  On  the  lowest  levels  of 
religion  the  employment  of  analogy  is  unreflecting,  nay 
almost  instinctive.  So  his  animistic  consciousness  provides 
the  savage  with  a  world  of  objects  possessing  a  life  like  his 
own,  and  forms  a  basis  for  religious  development.  The 
spirit  world  is  the  dim  projection  of  the  human  world. 
At  the  polytheistic  stage  the  operation  of  analogy  is  much 
more  noteworthy :  for  the  gods  are  here  passing  into  the 
form  of  personal  beings,  and  are  filling  in  the  outlines  of 
character  by  the  absorption  of  human  qualities.  But  the 
predication  of  human  qualities  is  free  and  uncritical,  and  the 
deities  participate  in  the  bad  as  well  as  the  good  qualities 
of  those  who  worship  them.  The  difference  between 
human  and  divine  qualities  is  at  most  one  of  degree.  The 
gods  are  stronger  and  wiser,  or  more  wily  and  destructive, 
than  mortals :  they  remain,  however,  magnified  human 
beings.  With  the  development  of  monotheism  a  limit  is 
set  to  the  unrestrained  use  of  analogy.  In  early  mono- 
theism, it  is  true,  the  deity  still  retains  traces  of  the 
defects  of  his  human  traits :  the  Hebrew  tribal  god 
Jahveh,  for  instance,  is  capable  of  repentance  after  the 
similitude  of  a  man.  The  evolution  of  spiritual  culture 
gradually  obliterates  these  cruder  anthropomorphisms,  and 
the  deity  rises  into  the  region  of  the  transcendent  and 
supremely  great.  The  divine  attributes  are  still  conceived 
on  the  basis  of  human  qualities,  but  they  are  thought  to 

1  This  truth  is  set  forth  in  the  well-known  lines  of  Goethe  : 
"  Und  wir  verehren 
Die  Unsterblichen, 
Als  waren  sie  Menschen, 
Thaten  im  Grossen, 
Was  der  Beste  im  Kleinen 
Thut  oder  mochte." 


THE   PRINCIPLE    OF   ANALOGY  337 

be  present  in  God  in  a  perfect  degree  and  without  admix- 
ture of  earthly  defects.  Thus  the  Christian  speaks  of  God 
as  infinitely  wise,  just,  and  good ;  and  his  conception  of  the 
Father  of  Spirits  is  a  refined  and  glorified  image  of  the 
human  relationship.  The  reflective  thought  and  purified 
moral  perception,  which  belong  to  the  age  of  spiritual 
religion,  purge  religious  faith  of  its  grosser  anthropo- 
morphism, and  make  men  careful  not  to  assign  attributes 
to  God  that  are  linked  with  human  ignorance  and  shortcom- 
ing. A  theology  which  determines  the  divine  attributes 
via  eminentice  or  via  negationis  is  at  least  well  aware  of 
the  difference  between  the  human  and  the  divine. 

The  development  of  critical  reflexion  has  issued  in  a 
widespread  tendency  to  call  in  question  the  validity  of 
analogies  in  religion.  This  was  perhaps  inevitable ;  and 
it  is  only  carrying  a  stage  further  the  refining  process 
the  religious  consciousness  itself  applied  to  the  anthropo- 
morphisms of  older  religion.  From  doubting  the  pro- 
priety of  some  analogies,  it  is  not  a  long  step  to  deny 
the  fitness  of  any.  Even  in  the  higher  polytheism  there 
are  indications  of  this  tendency :  the  Greek  Xenophanes, 
for  instance,  declared  that,  if  the  animals  could  draw,  each 
would  depict  its  god  in  its  own  image.1  In  the  modern 
world  the  growth  of  scientific  and  philosophical  thought 
has  made  men  increasingly  critical  of  conceptions  of  deity 
which  are  obviously  anthropomorphic.  The  difference 
between  the  divine  and  the  human  is  accentuated,  and  the 
pronounced  anthropomorphism  which  is  still  present  in 
popular  religion  offers  an  easy  target  to  the  shafts  of 
criticism.  One  recalls  how  Matthew  Arnold,  rather  more 
than  a  generation  ago,  censured  the  evangelical  creed  for 
what  he  deemed  its  anthropomorphic  grossness,  and 

1  Vid.  Ritter  and  Preller,  p.  100  (fr.  6).  Cp.  also  his  saying  (fr.  5)  : 
d\X'  ol  ftporol  doKOVffi  yevva<rdai  deobs  rty  ff^er^prjv  dadrjrd  T  fyeiv  <j)uvf)v  re 
6t/j.as  re.  Montaigne  (Apology  of  Raymond  Sebond)  illustrates  a  like  line  of 
thought.  "  As  I  think  Antiquity  imagined  it  did  something  for  divine 
Majesty  when  she  compared  the  same  unto  man,  attiring  him  with  his 
faculties  and  enriching  him  with  his  strange  humours,  and  most  shameful 
necessities." 


338  MODES   OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

suggested  in  place  of  the  "  magnified  non-natural  man  "  of 
popular  theology  the  sublimated  idea  of  "a  stream  of 
tendency  which  makes  for  righteousness."  And  even 
those  who  are  far  from  finding  the  secret  of  spiritual 
wisdom  in  this  conception  may  admit  that  analogies  have 
been  used,  and  are  still  used,  by  religious  people  which 
will  not  stand  the  test  of  dispassionate  reflexion.  Criticism 
must  therefore  not  be  banned,  and,  if  it  is  reverent  and 
fair-minded,  it  will  be  helpful  rather  than  harmful. 

But  it  is  well  to  consider  carefully  where  the  critical 
movement  is  leading,  and  how  far  the  religious  man  can 
follow  it  without  sacrificing  his  religion  on  the  way.  Some 
at  all  events  who  take  part  in  the  movement  do  so,  not  in 
order  to  purify  religion,  but  to  discredit  it.  The  analogical 
method,  we  are  told,  is  radically  unsound,  and  no  mundane 
image  is  relevant  to  God  or  the  Absolute.  A  divine  Mind, 
if  such  exists,  must  be  fundamentally  different  from  the 
human.  Any  being  that  corresponds  to  God  lies,  it  is 
argued,  beyond  the  limit  of  our  form  of  thinking,  though 
men  readily  forget  this  and  bow  down  before  an  image  of 
their  own  creation.  So-called  knowledge  of  divine  things 
must  give  place  to  nescience.  Beyond  question,  behind 
much  of  the  scepticism  and  agnosticism  of  the  present  day, 
there  lies  the  conviction,  expressed  or  unexpressed,  that 
it  is  radically  wrong  to  conceive  of  the  ultimate  Reality 
after  any  human  analogy.  In  order  to  deal  with  this 
argument  we  must  consider  more  closely  the  function  and 
meaning  of  the  principle  of  analogy. 

The  fundamental  process  in  the  development  of  know- 
ledge is  the  act  of  judgment.  On  the  basis  of  this 
elementary  activity  the  work  of  generalising  and  reasoning 
goes  on,  and  knowledge  evolves.  The  judgment,  as  we 
have  noted  already,  is  the  mental  act  by  which  a  predicate 
is  referred  to  a  subject,  as,  for  instance,  when  we  qualify  the 
subject  man  by  the  predicate  mortal.  To  the  movement 
of  judgment  difference  is  essential :  to  judge,  it  has  been 
said,  is  to  be  conscious  of  something  through  the  conscious- 
ness of  something  else.  The  predicate  is  a  significant  idea, 


THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   ANALOGY  339 

and  by  its  reference  to  the  subject  the  latter  acquires 
meaning.  Language,  in  the  form  of  the  proposition,  is 
therefore  a  kind  of  symbolism  in  virtue  of  which  the  objects 
of  experience  become  universally  significant  for  knowing 
subjects.  Apart  from  the  use  of  sign  or  symbol  of  some 
kind,  it  would  not  be  possible  for  human  beings  to  acquire 
knowledge.  The  predicates  of  our  judgments,  then,  are 
the  signs  through  which  we  construe  our  experience,  and 
it  is  important  to  remember  how  they  are  formed.  The 
process  of  formation  is  gradual.  Generalised  and  reflective 
thinking  is  relatively  late  in  the  order  of  development, 
and  in  the  individual  and  the  race  thought  is  at  first 
purely  figurative  and  pictorial.  The  mind  judges  through 
concrete  images  drawn  from  the  environment,  while  these 
acquire  a  representative  function.  The  associations  of 
the  image,  with  their  power  to  suggest  and  make  vivid, 
give  it  value  for  the  purpose  of  representation ;  and  in 
the  course  of  use  the  idea,  or  meaning  associated  with 
the  image,  becomes  all-important  and  functions  indepen- 
dently. But  it  is  not  needful  to  dwell  on  a  matter 
discussed  in  an  earlier  chapter.1  What  has  been  said 
may  perhaps  serve  to  indicate  how  we  construe  one  side  of 
experience  through  another,  making  what  is  less  known 
more  intelligible  by  predicates  drawn  from  what  is  better 
known.  In  thinking  we  lay  under  contribution  different 
fields  of  experience,  comparing  them  and  helping  our 
minds  by  the  free  use  of  analogies.  And  so  long  as  the 
analogies  we  employ  adequately  interpret  for  our  purposes 
the  working  of  the  object,  we  justify  their  use  as  predicates. 
If  the  knowing  process  were  dependent  on  the  establish- 
ment of  a  strict  identity  between  the  predicate  as  originally 
forming  part  of  one  section  of  experience,  and  then  con- 
ceived as  finding  application  in  another,  knowledge  in  the 
commonly  accepted  sense  would  be  impossible.  The  test 
is  not  bare  identity  but  relevancy  which  gives  satisfactory 
results  ;  and  so  tested,  analogies  can  prove  relevant.  An 
examination  of  the  phenomena  of  language  shows  how  deep 
1  Cp.  Chapter  I.  p.  65  ff. 


340  MODES   OF   RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

rooted  is  the  instinct  in  the  human  mind  to  interpret 
things  through  analogy.  We  serve  ourselves  of  analogies 
drawn  from  the  external  world  to  describe  our  inward 
processes,  and  we  habitually  transfer  inward  experience 
to  outward  objects.  The  phenomenon  of  animism,  so  often 
referred  to  in  these  pages,  is  a  good  illustration  of  the 
employment  of  analogy,  and  common  phrases  still  reveal 
to  a  discerning  eye  the  anthropomorphism  of  early 
thought.  When  we  say  "  The  sun  sinks,"  or  "  The  river 
runs,"  or  "  The  wind  rushes,"  we  are  really  interpreting  the 
processes  of  nature  after  the  analogy  of  our  own  activity. 
Again,  when  the  scientific  man  speaks  of  the  '  forces '  of 
nature,  or  terms  society  an  '  organism,'  he  is  working  with 
a  predicate  which  derives  its  value  from  analogy.  So  far- 
reaching  is  the  principle,  that  if  you  were  to  say  that  all 
man's  interpretation  of  reality  after  the  analogy  of  his  own 
experience  is  anthropomorphic,  and  therefore  invalid,  then 
he  would  be  shut  out  from  knowledge  altogether.  Man 
cannot  escape  from  himself,  he  cannot  emancipate  himself 
from  the  conditions  of  his  own  experience ;  and  he  must 
find  the  key  to  the  interpretation  of  his  world  within 
himself,  if  he  is  to  find  it  at  all. 

Our  critic  will  tell  us  he  does  not  object  to  every  use 
of  analogy,  what  he  finds  fault  with  is  its  illegitimate  use. 
If  there  are  cases  where  the  method  is  serviceable,  there 
are  also  cases  where  it  is  inapplicable,  and  where  to  employ 
it  is  certain  to  mislead.  This  is  true  in  regard  to  religion, 
and  particularly  in  regard  to  the  conception  of  God.  When 
the  Deity  is  conceived  under  the  image  of  a  magnified  man, 
he  is  obviously  misconceived  and  misunderstood. 

The  argument  is  plausible,  and  it  is  not  without  force 
against  some  religious  conceptions.  Beyond  question  we 
must  admit  there  are  limitations  and  defects  in  the  human 
personality  which  can  have  no  counterpart  in  a  supreme 
and  perfect  Being.  But,  admitting  this,  we  are  justified 
in  demanding  on  what  grounds  we  are  debarred  from  any 
use  of  analogy  when  we  try  to  conceive  the  divine  nature. 
Now  the  severest  critics  of  the  use  of  the  principle  of 


THE    PRINCIPLE   OF   ANALOGY  341 

analogy  in  religion  are  those  thinkers  whose  philosophy 
takes  the  form  of  a  thoroughgoing  monism.  God  on  this 
view,  or  what  stands  for  God,  must  be  identified  with  the 
sum  of  reality,  or  with  experience  as  an  inclusive  totality. 
In  this  instance  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  figures  and 
images,  drawn  from  a  part  of  experience,  can  be  transferred 
to  that  whole  of  experience  which  is  never  given  to  us  in 
any  experience.  If,  for  example,  personality,  which  is  a 
development  within  experience,  implies  limitation  and  the 
contrast  of  the  not-self,  on  what  ground  can  you  justify 
the  application  of  the  idea  analogically  to  the  Absolute 
which  includes  all  differences  within  itself  ?  Certainly 
there  have  been  thinkers  who  defended  this  step  and 
boldly  proclaimed  their  Absolute  to  be  personal ;  but 
while  the  motives  which  prompted  them  to  this  conclusion 
are  intelligible,  the  soundness  of  their  reasoning  is  open  to 
dispute.  The  attitude  of  Spinoza — and  the  same  may  be 
said  of  Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley  in  our  own  day — is  more  logical 
when  he  frankly  declares  that  intelligence  and  will,  which 
characterise  finite  modes,  are  not  predicable  of  God  the 
Infinite  Substance.  "The  intellect  and  will  which 
constitute  the  essential  nature  of  God  must  differ  utterly 
from  our  intellect  and  will,  nor  can  they  agree  in  anything 
except  the  name :  just  as  little,  in  fact,  as  the  celestial 
Constellation  of  the  Dog  is  identical  with  the  animal  that 
barks." 1  The  validity  of  monism  as  a  philosophical  theory 
we  are  not,  of  course,  discussing :  but  we  agree  that,  if  it  is 
valid  without  qualification,  the  refusal  to  interpret  the 
divine  nature  by  means  of  any  human  analogy  is  justified. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  case  is  otherwise  with  a  genuine 
theism — a  theism  which  makes  all  reality  depend  on  God, 
yet  does  not  identify  him  with  the  totality  of  things. 
The  grosser  kinds  of  anthropomorphism  have  assuredly  no 
place  in  a  spiritual  theism ;  and  the  divine  nature,  in  its 
transcendent  aspect,  must  always  be  differentiated  from  the 
human.  But  the  objection  to  any  and  every  use  of 
analogy  in  this  instance  has  lost  its  force.  That  objection 
1  Ethica,  Bk.  i.  xvii.  Scholium. 


342  MODES   OF   RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

is  in  point  against  the  application  of  analogy  to  an 
absolute  Being  who,  ex  hypothesi,  transcends  the  distinguish- 
ing and  relating  movement  of  human  thought.  But  the 
theistic  conception  of  the  World-Ground  is  equally  removed 
from  pantheism  and  agnosticism,  and  to  apply  an  analogy 
to  it  is  not  a  contradictio  in  adjecto.  For  here  there  is  a 
correspondence  between  the  human  and  the  divine,  between 
personality  as  it  exists  in  man  and  personality  in  God. 
This  correspondence  is  possible  in  a  Theism  which  con- 
sistently refuses  to  identity  God  with  the  whole.  In 
Christian  theism  the  deliberate  acceptance  of  the  principle 
of  analogy  is  implied  in  the  theological  doctrine  that 
'  man  is  made  in  the  image  of  God.'  And  if  human 
nature  is  at  least  a  partial  reflexion  of  the  divine,  man 
may  legitimately  think  of  God  after  the  pattern  of  what  is 
highest  and  best  in  himself.  Every  speculative  theory 
which  attributes  self-consciousness  to  God  is  really 
founding  on  the  human  analogy. 

There  is  a  further  point  to  be  kept  in  mind.  What  is 
true  of  the  predicate  in  general  is  true  of  an  analogy :  it 
does  not  postulate  a  strict  identity,  it  only  affirms  a 
general  agreement  or  correspondence.  Hence  it  does  not 
follow  that  human  analogies  can  be  applied  without 
qualification  to  God.  When  we  affirm  personality  of  God, 
for  example,  we  do  not  affirm  it  in  exactly  the  same  sense 
as  that  in  which  it  applies  to  men,  though  the  lower  form 
helps  us  to  conceive  the  higher.  Analogy  plays  a  valuable 
part  in  suggesting  ideas  and  in  aiding  our  thoughts. 
Moreover,  if  the  notion  of  God  is  to  have  positive  content, 
and  not  to  be  merely  determined  by  negatives,  man  can 
only  gain  the  idea  of  that  content  through  his  own  personal 
experience.  We  are  indeed  well  aware  that  many  ideas 
and  images  derived  from  mundane  sources  cannot  be 
regarded  as  logical  determinations  of  the  Ground  of  all 
experience.  But  they  may  be  taken  as  signs  and  symbols 
denoting  values — values  which  we  postulate  must  belong  to 
the  divine  nature,  if  it  is  to  fulfil  our  spiritual  needs  and 
demands.  The  theist  who  speaks  of  God  as  a  Father  in 


TELEOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATION  343 

Heaven  is  employing  an  analogy  in  the  way  thus  described. 
The  ordinary  religious  mind  is  content  to  affirm  validity  of 
such  conceptions  on  the  strength  of  their  working-value. 
We  have  tried  to  show  on  broad  lines  that  the  use  of  the 
analogical  method  can  be  justified.  Nevertheless  this  does 
not  settle  the  problem  of  the  ultimate  validity  of  any 
particular  analogy.  To  decide  this  point  in  any  given  case 
will  fall  to  a  speculative  theory  which  seeks  to  determine 
the  ultimate  truth  of  religion,  and  in  the  light  of  this 
truth  evaluates  current  religious  conceptions. 

B. — TELEOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION. 

The  teleological  interpretation  of  things  enters  into  the 
substance  of  religious  thinking,  and  it  may  be  regarded  as 
a  special  and  highly  important  application  of  the  principle 
we  have  been  discussing.  For  it  is  the  essence  of  teleology 
to  construe  the  facts  of  the  external  universe,  and  the 
movements  of  history,  after  the  analogy  of  that  purposive 
life  of  which  man  is  conscious  in  himself.  In  distinction 
from  mechanical  causation,  such  as  obtains  between  the 
elements  of  outer  experience,  there  is  a  final  cause :  that 
for  which  a  thing  is  done,  the  end  which  is  contrasted  with 
the  process  towards  it.  The  outstanding  feature  of  mental 
life  is  that  it  is  purposively  directed  to  ends,  not  mechani- 
cally propelled.  For  it  is  a  movement  determined  by 
interest,  and  interest  always  converges  on  a  goal.  And 
this  direction  to  ends  which  characterises  the  activity  of 
our  minds,  we  imagine  obtains  in  the  events  of  the  world 
around  us.  We  act  on  a  purpose  ourselves,  and  we  sup- 
pose the  working  of  the  universe  reveals  a  purpose.  The 
religious  consciousness  makes  constant  use  of  this  notion, 
and  thereby  gives  meaning  to  its  world.  It  is  less  in- 
terested in  the  causal  explanation  of  things  than  in  the 
source  from  which  they  proceed  and  the  end  to  which  they 
move.  The  religious  man  concerns  himself  with  ultimate 
origins  and  destinies,  and  his  whole  scheme  of  life  is  teleo- 
logically  framed.  He  believes  that  he  himself  has  a  chief 


344  MODES    OF   KELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

end  to  realise,  and  sees  the  facts  of  nature  and  history 
charged  with  purpose.  To  the  spiritual  eye,  looking  out 
on  the  wide  world,  "  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet,"  and 
the  humblest  creature  has  a  destiny  to  fulfil.  Hence  in 
the  higher  religions  there  is  the  conception  of  a  compre- 
hensive Providence,  which  guides  the  course  of  nature  and 
history  towards  a  predetermined  end.  The  world  and  life 
are  conceived  to  reveal  a  divine  plan,  which  is  being 
unfolded  stage  by  stage  and  will  at  last  reach  its  consum- 
mation. In  such  an  order  nothing  is  arbitrary  or  merely 
accidental :  all  things  are  purposively  controlled,  and 
combine  together  to  realise  the  far-reaching  design  of  God. 
So  the  religious  mind  invests  the  world  with  significance 
and  value  by  conceiving  all  things  as  parts  of  a  teleological 
order  which  expresses  the  Divine  Will 

However  fitting  and  intelligible  this  scheme  may 
appear,  it  has  not  escaped  criticism ;  and  the  various 
criticisms  which  have  been  passed  upon  it  will,  I  think, 
be  found  to  go  back  to  one  fundamental  objection.  To 
apply  the  idea  of  purpose  to  the  world  is,  it  is  said,  to 
make  an  illegitimate  use  of  a  human  analogy.  In  our 
personal  experience  we  find  the  notions  of  means  and  end 
most  useful,  and  we  habituate  ourselves  to  act  in  terms  of 
purpose.  But  this,  we  are  told,  is  very  far  from  justifying 
the  transference  of  our  idea  of  purpose  to  nature.  It  does 
not  follow  that  what  we  find  of  value  for  the  organisation 
of  our  own  little  lives  is  likewise  essential  to  the  processes 
of  the  great  world. 

Here  let  me  say  at  the  outset,  that  the  hostility  of 
many  scientific  thinkers  to  interpretation  by  final  causes 
is  not  altogether  surprising.  The  readiness  and  the  reck- 
lessness with  which  the  teleological  idea  was  applied  by 
ordinary  minds,  and  often  by  religious  people,  were 
calculated  to  provoke  a  reaction  against  it.  The  free  use 
of  final  causes  to  explain  what  was  obscure  was  temptingly 
easy,  and  this  procedure  was  prejudicial,  as  Bacon  com- 
plained, to  sound  philosophy.  Hence  the  finalist  was  often 
the  man  who  made  a  liberal  use  of  the  ignava  ratio  or 


TELEOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATION  345 

lazy  argument :  when  you  failed  to  explain  a  thing  by  the 
ordinary  principle  of  causality,  you  could  'explain*  it  by 
reference  to  some  purpose  of  nature  or  of  the  Creator. 
This  method  lent  itself  with  dangerous  facility  to  the  well- 
meant  endeavours  of  the  older  theologians  to  expound  and 
emphasise  the  beneficence  of  the  divine  purpose.  The 
order  of  the  solar  system,  the  marvellous  adjustments  of 
the  human  body,  the  complex  organisation  of  language, 
and  the  wonderful  variety  of  animal  types,  could  all  be 
1  explained '  through,  and  made  to  testify  to,  the  working 
of  Providence.  The  characteristic  of  this  teleology  was  its 
externality :  it  assumed  that  the  order  and  harmony  of 
nature  was  produced  by  contrivance  and  by  disposition  of 
parts,  such  as  man  employs  to  gain  his  ends.  And  when 
man  found  that  there  was  a  great  deal  in  the  natural  order 
of  things  which  worked  for  his  benefit,  it  only  needed  the 
sense  of  his  own  importance  to  make  him  believe  that  it 
had  been  specially  designed  for  his  good.  This  mode  of 
interpretation  could  be  carried  to  any  length :  the  moon 
was  fixed  in  heaven  to  give  us  light  on  winter  nights ; 
sheep  and  oxen  were  created  to  nourish  our  bodies ;  and 
the  primeval  forests  were  turned  into  coal  to  supply  us 
with  fuel.  There  is  a  touch  of  truth  in  the  remark  of  a 
contemporary  thinker :  "  Man  having  made  the  world  his 
prey,  says  that  God  made  the  world  to  that  end." l 

This  crude  kind  of  teleology  has  now  fallen  into  dis- 
repute, and  scientific  and  philosophical  writers  do  not  care 
to  waste  time  in  controverting  it.  The  rise  and  ultimate 
dominance  of  the  idea  of  evolution,  which  marked  the 
nineteenth  century,  undermined  the  presuppositions  on 
which  it  rested,  and  showed  the  material  order  of  things 
in  a  new  light.  Thus  the  Darwinian  theory  of  Natural 
Selection  and  the  Survival  of  the  Fittest  did  away  with 
the  older  assumption,  that  organic  types  were  fixed  and 
their  origin  could  not  be  scientifically  explained.  Here 
and  elsewhere  a  new  method  and  point  of  view  took  the 
force  out  of  the  older  arguments.  The  study  of  things  in 

1  Carveth  Read,  Metaphysics  of  Nature,  1905,  p.  345. 


346  MODES   OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

their  development  from  simpler  forms  rendered  the  im- 
mediate appeal  to  final  causes  superfluous.  At  the  same 
time  there  has  been  a  more  radical  criticism  of  the  notion 
that  nature  subserves  moral  ends.  When  we  look  dis- 
passionately on  what  takes  place  in  nature,  we  find  much 
of  which  a  former  generation  of  religious  apologists  were 
ignorant,  or  which  they  were  content  to  ignore.  The 
struggle  for  existence  is  severe,  and  in  the  process  multitudes 
of  the  less  fit  are  ruthlessly  eliminated.  Nature  is  infinitely 
wasteful  in  the  production  of  life,  and  she  brings  forth  with 
a  severe  impartiality  the  fair  and  comely  and  the  repulsive 
and  loathsome.  She  forms  the  instrument  of  destruction 
as  readily  as  the  instrument  of  service :  the  fang  of  the 
cobra  or  the  tooth  of  the  tiger  is  just  as  perfect  an 
instrument  in  its  way  as  the  udder  of  the  cow  or  the  hand 
of  the  man.  Nature  is  bountiful  in  producing  life,  so 
bountiful  that  she  sends  forth  swarms  of  parasites — 
creatures  whose  very  function  is  to  prey  on  other  forms  of 
life,  and  which  we  cannot  contemplate  without  disgust.  In 
face  of  the  facts  we  may  argue  that  it  would  be  hard  for 
an  unprejudiced  mind  to  come  to  the  conclusion,  that 
nature  is  directly  organised  to  supply  a  system  of  means 
for  the  well-being  of  living  creatures.  Thougli  some  things 
suggest  this,  other  things  suggest  exactly  the  opposite. 
If  we  are  to  maintain  the  validity  of  teleology  in  the 
natural  world,  it  certainly  cannot  be  in  the  narrow  sense  of 
an  adjustment  of  means  for  the  good  of  sentient  creatures. 
The  breakdown  of  the  old  teleology  has  not  made  more 
plausible,  however,  the  theory  that  the  phenomena  of  life 
can  be  explained  by  the  principle  of  mechanical  causality. 
An  organism  is  no  mechanical  contrivance,  and  the  need 
of  an  immanent  end  to  explain  its  development  is  as  urgent 
now  as  in  the  time  of  Aristotle.  A  finalism  of  this  im- 
manent kind  will  always  figure  in  philosophic  thought, 
unless,  indeed,  it  can  be  shown  in  some  convincing  way  that 
the  notion  of  end  is  invalid.  But  can  this  be  proved  ? 
Attempts  have  certainly  been  made  to  do  so,  and  with 
what  success  let  us  now  consider.  The  conception  of  end 


TELEOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATION  347 

has  been  attacked  on  two  grounds :  in  the  first  place  it  is 
contended  that  a  critical  examination  of  the  idea  discredits 
its  validity,  and,  in  the  second  place,  it  is  maintained  that 
there  is  no  room  for  the  idea  in  a  monistic  philosophy. 
On  the  former  side  the  discussion  of  the  question  by  Kant 
is  probably  the  most  familiar.  In  Kant's  view  the  notion 
of  end  is  not  a  category  which  the  self  brings  with  it  to 
the  constitution  of  experience,  but  is  reached  by  reflexion 
upon  experience.  In  contemplating  one  experience  in 
particular,  the  phenomenon  of  life,  we  find  it  expedient  to 
go  from  the  whole  to  the  parts  of  the  organism,  and  to 
regard  the  whole  as  the  end  of  the  parts.  But  this  is 
only  a  regulative  point  of  view  according  to  Kant — a  point 
of  view  which  helps  to  order  our  thoughts ;  and  we  have 
no  right  to  treat  the  end  as  an  objective  principle.1  Here 
we  have  the  essence  of  the  critical  treatment  of  the  problem, 
and  it  consists  in  asserting  the  subjectivity  of  the  idea. 
Eeflexion  suggests  the  notion ;  it  often  proves  convenient 
and  serviceable ;  but  we  are  not  entitled  to  say  it  is 
involved  in  the  structure  of  reality.  In  the  same  spirit 
it  is  argued  that  the  conception  of  end  does  not  really 
explain  anything :  we  derive  the  idea  from  our  volitional 
experience,  and  apply  it  when  the  mechanism  of  a  process 
escapes  us.2  In  other  words,  the  use  of  the  idea  does  not 
give  a  real  understanding;  in  fact  its  use  depends  on  a 
defect  of  insight.  The  point  of  the  objection  from  the 
monistic  standpoint  is,  that  the  ultimate  validity  of  the 
conception  of  end  would  mean  a  dualism,  and  an  imperfec- 
tion in  the  system  of  things  which  cannot  really  attach  to 
it.  The  whole  is  perfect  and  complete.  Spinoza,  who 
identifies  the  whole  of  reality  with  God,  says  that  the 
doctrine  of  final  cause  does  away  with  the  perfection  of 
God,  and  implies  that  he  seeks  after  something  of  which 
he  is  in  need.3  Similarly,  on  the  assumption  that  ultimate 

1  It  is  hard,  however,  to  reconcile  this  limitation  with  the  use  Kant  makes 
of  the  conception  of  '  end  '  in  his  ethical  theory. 

2  Vid.  Adamson,  Development  of  Modern  Philosophy,  vol.  ii.  p.  186  ff. 
8  Eth.,  Ft.  I.  Appendix. 


348  MODES    OF    RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE 

reality  is  a  timelessly  perfect  whole,  we  have  been  told 
recently  that  teleology  "  in  the  sense  of  aiming  at  the 
unfulfilled  gives  an  unreal  importance  to  time,  and  to  the 
part  of  any  whole — it  may  be  a  relatively  trivial  part — 
which  happens  to  come  last  in  succession."1 

Of  the  latter  class  of  objections  it  is  not  necessary 
to  say  much  at  this  point.  They  rest  on  a  certain  theory 
of  what  is  ultimately  real,  and  they  are  only  valid  if 
that  theory  is  valid.  Thus,  if  Reality  is  a  timelessly 
perfect  whole,  time  is  not  ultimately  real,  and  a  purpose 
which  requires  time  to  work  out  is  infected  with  the 
same  unreality.  But  the  truer  method  surely  is  to  ask 
whether  an  idea  justifies  itself  in  experience,  rather  than 
to  condemn  it  on  the  strength  of  a  speculative  theory 
which,  at  the  best,  is  not  certain.  Coming  back  then 
to  the  critical  point  of  view,  we  saw  that  the  substance 
of  its  contention  was,  that  the  idea  of  end  is  subjective 
merely.  The  belief  that  ends  rule  in  the  world  around 
us  springs  from  a  habit  we  have  of  projecting  our  own 
experiences  into  things.  What  we  have  now  to  consider 
is,  whether  the  facts  themselves  do  not  demand  a  teleo- 
logical  interpretation. 

Critics  of  teleology  are  usually  willing  to  admit  the 
validity  of  the  causal  conception,  though  they  take  ex- 
ception to  the  validity  of  final  causes.  But  we  ask 
whether  the  two  ideas  can  be  separated  and  contrasted 
in  this  way.  In  a  former  chapter  we  saw  reason  to 
conclude,  that  causality  was  not  an  a  priori  category 
in  the  Kantian  sense  of  the  term.  It  is  a  postulate 
which  the  mind  is  impelled  to  make  in  order  that 
experience  may  become  intelligible  to  it.  Scientific 
knowledge  is  built  up  on  the  postulate — a  postulate 
which  justifies  itself — that  there  are  constant  ways  of 
acting  and  constant  connexions  of  events  in  nature.  Any 
such  determinate  way  of  acting  in  a  particular  sphere 

1  Bosanquet,  Individuality  and  Value,  1912,  p.  135.  Bosanquet's  view, 
I  take  it,  is  that  teleology  has  a  certain  justification  within  experience,  but 
breaks  down  when  we  try  to  transform  it  into  an  ultimate  category. 


TELEOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATION  349 

we  interpret  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  and 
each  causal  connexion  is  an  element  in  a  larger  whole 
or  system.  A  bell  is  struck  and  gives  out  a  distinct 
note,  and  here  we  say  we  have  cause  and  effect ;  but 
the  cause  and  effect  are  not  really  isolated  phenomena, 
they  are  elements  in  a  group  or  whole  of  interrelated 
principles.  In  this  case  the  specific  causal  connexion 
is  only  intelligible  because  it  falls  within  that  system 
of  causal  connexions  which  we  term  the  laws  of  sound. 
In  fact,  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  in  each  particular 
instance  is  determined  by  the  general  working  of  the 
system  of  which  it  is  a  part.  This  will  illustrate  the 
truth  that,  even  in  what  seems  a  purely  mechanical 
causality,  there  is  a  reference  to  a  whole  which  determines 
the  way  of  working  of  its  elements.  This  reference  of 
elements  to  the  whole  becomes  much  more  explicit  when 
there  is  that  intimate  union  of  parts  which  is  called 
organic.  Here  the  actings  of  the  parts  have  no  right 
meaning  apart  from  their  function  in  the  system.  And 
especially  when  we  consider  the  growth  of  organisms — 
that  process  in  which  living  systems  pass  through  a 
number  of  typical  stages  culminating  in  each  case  in 
a  specific  result — we  can  hardly  do  other  than  conclude, 
that  the  completed  whole  or  end  somehow  governed 
the  elements  in  the  process  of  interaction  which  led 
up  to  that  end.  Granted  that  the  analogy  of  our  own 
mental  processes  impels  us  to  think  of  development  as 
a  striving  towards  an  end ;  for  all  our  mental  processes 
are  governed  by  interest,  which  spells  purposive  activity. 
It  must  also  be  granted,  however,  that  organic  develop- 
ment receives  a  meaning  when  interpreted  after  the 
analogy  of  our  own  conative  activity.  And,  we  ask, 
is  the  analogy  not  justified  ?  Are  the  facts  intelligible 
apart  from  the  postulate  of  an  immanent  directive  activity 
controlling  the  process  ?  "  To  say  that  anything  sub- 
human strives  to  be  what  it  becomes,  is  only  to  say  that 
from  time  to  time  it  becomes  what  it  is."1  But  is 

Carveth  Read,  op.  cit.  p.  341. 


350  MODES   OF   RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

not  this  to  ignore  the  crux  of  the  problem  ?  for  the 
problem  is  how  to  explain  without  a  final  cause  a  process 
which  leads  always  to  a  characteristic  or  typical  result. 
The  phenomena  are  indeed  inexplicable,  if  there  be  no 
activity,  controlling  and  selecting,  immanent  in  the 
organism  itself.  Again,  we  are  told  by  naturalistic 
writers  not  to  regard  the  development  of  organs  in  a 
living  body  as  purposive  to  the  interests  of  life.  A 
particular  organ,  mechanically  produced,  has  a  certain 
use,  and  we  come  to  imagine  it  was  produced  with  a 
view  to  that  use.  The  eye  was  not  developed  in  order 
that  the  animal  might  see,  but  because  it  was  developed 
the  creature  saw.  This  theory  needs  only  to  be  carried 
out  consistently  to  lead  to  absurd  results.1  Let  us  suppose 
for  a  moment  that  the  eye  was  not  developed  with  a 
view  to  sight.  In  his  recent  book  on  "  Creative  Evolution," 
Bergson  has  pointed  out  the  similarity  in  the  structure 
of  the  eye  in  animals  so  far  apart  as  the  molluscs  and 
the  vertebrates,  and  he  asks  how  this  similarity  can  be 
explained  as  an  accidental  variation.2  What  likelihood 
is  there  that  two  very  different  types  of  organism,  by 
some  mechanical  correspondence,  produced  an  organ 
similar  in  structure  and  function,  if  in  neither  case  the 
end  had  anything  to  do  in  determining  the  process  ? 
To  turn  to  a  final  cause  in  such  a  case  is  not  to  abandon 
explanation  and  yield  to  the  'lazy  argument.'  We  are 
driven  to  do  so  because  every  mechanical  explanation 
is  hopeless.  In  fact,  those  who  try  to  banish  ends  from 
nature  generally  reintroduce  them  under  another  name. 
The  impossibility  of  entirely  dispensing  with  ends  in 
the  organic  world  is  evident  in  the  Darwinian  theory 
of  Natural  Selection.  Natural  selection,  as  a  mechanical 
process,  is  a  mere  process  of  elimination  which  does  not 

1  This  is  excellently  shown  by  Paulsen,  Einleitung  in  die  Philosophic, 
1899,  p.  232.     The  ox  does  not  have  a  horn  in  order  to  thrust,  but  because 
he  has  a  horn  he  thrusts  ;  he  does  not  thrust  to  knock  down  his  opponent, 
but  because  he  thrusts  his  opponent  falls  ! 

2  L'tivolution  Crtatrice,  p.  70. 


TELEOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATION  351 

explain  evolution.  If  the  theory  is  to  work  you  must 
suppose  living  forms  strive  to  develop  themselves,  and 
use  the  opportunities  of  the  struggle  for  existence  to 
promote  organic  ends.  When  you  term  *  variations ' 
successful,  it  means  that  they  are  used  in  the  interests 
of  progress ;  and  progress  implies  a  teleological  standpoint. 
The  character  of  life  accounts  for  evolution  in  organisms, 
and  not  the  facts  and  changes  of  their  environment. 
And  finalism  appears  to  be  involved  in  the  intrinsic  nature 
of  the  life-process :  the  self-conserving  impulse  which 
runs  through  all  grades  of  living  beings  is  meaningless 
if  it  is  not  purposive.  The  processes  of  secretion  and 
nutrition,  the  adaptation  of  organs  implied  in  reproduction, 
the  power  to  heal  injured  organs,  and  in  some  cases  to 
renew  lost  parts,  are  only  intelligible  on  the  assumption 
of  a  directive  activity  immanent  in  life  itself.  It  is 
not  without  significance  that  an  eminent  biologist  gives 
to  this  activity  the  name  entelechy,  and  assigns  to  it  a 
regulative  function.1 

But  if  the  facts  and  processes  of  the  organic  world 
can  only  be  understood  on  the  acceptance  of  the  teleo- 
logical principle,  we  have  to  consider  what  this  implies. 
The  organic  world  passes  by  insensible  degrees  into  what 
we  call  the  inorganic  world.  Between  the  two  worlds 
a  constant  interaction  goes  on,  and  elements  from  the 
lower  world  are  continually  being  absorbed  by  living 
beings  and  made  to  function  as  constituents  in  their  life. 
Such  a  process  presupposes  adaptation  and  sympathy; 
and  elements  which  play  a  part  in  a  teleological  system 
must  themselves  be  teleologically  determined.  What  in 
its  own  nature  is  purely  mechanical  could  not  become 
the  medium  in  which  an  immanent  end  works  itself  out. 
No  doubt  a  mechanism,  say  a  watch,  can  show  an  end 
externally  impressed  upon  it.  But  when  the  end  is 
immanent,  as  in  an  organism,  elements  which  are  simply 

1  Driesch,  Science  and  Philosophy  of  the  Organism,  vol.  ii.  p.  191.  He 
holds  that  '  entelechy '  controls  the  development  of  the  organism  by 
suspending  or  setting  free  existing  potentials. 


352  MODES   OF   RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

related  mechanically  could  not  be  permeated  by  the  end. 
The  continuity  of  life  thus  calls  for  an  extension  of  the 
purposive  process  from  the  human,  through  the  animal, 
into  the  material  world.  The  natural  order  which  is 
responsive  to  the  purposive  movement  of  human  thought, 
and  the  material  elements  which  become  the  means  to 
organic  process,  alike  must  fall  under  the  dominion  of 
the  realm  of  ends.  This,  of  course,  involves  some  revision 
of  the  ordinary  idea  of  what  the  material  world  itself 
means.  And,  in  particular,  it  requires  us  to  suppose  that 
the  mechanical  point  of  view  is  merely  a  provisional 
one,  and  finds  its  completion  and  explanation  in  a  teleo- 
logical  order.  Mechanism,  in  other  words,  is  an  abstract 
point  of  view,  convenient  for  specific  purposes,  no  doubt, 
and  especially  useful  at  those  levels  of  existence  where 
spontaneity  seems  to  have  vanished.  Yet  when  we  think 
out  the  implications  of  a  mechanical  order  so  called, 
we  find  ourselves  compelled  to  correct  our  original 
assumptions,  to  recognise  the  elements  are  not  really 
external  to  one  another,  but  fall  within  a  teleological 
system.  The  printed  page  for  certain  purposes  may  be 
regarded  as  the  outcome  of  a  mechanical  process:  it 
can  only  be  understood  as  the  expression  of  purposive 
thought. 

What,  it  may  be  asked,  is  the  religious  significance 
of  the  teleological  theory  we  have  been  trying  to  maintain  ? 
Does  the  notion  of  ends  immanent  in  nature  and  life 
harmonise  with  the  idea  of  the  working  out  of  a  divine 
purpose  ?  Is  there  truth  in  the  old  conception  of  a 
providential  government  of  the  world  ?  It  is  plain  that 
the  teleological  theory  just  outlined  does  not  lend  support 
to  the  idea  of  an  external  designer,  who  arranges  and 
disposes  things  so  that  they  become  the  instruments  of 
his  purpose.  But  it  is  consistent  with  the  idea  of  a 
divine  end  working  from  within,  and  fulfilling  itself  in 
and  through  the  order  of  nature.  There  is  nothing  in 
a  teleological  order  so  conceived  which  is  in  conflict 
with  the  hypothesis,  that  the  elements  of  existence  from 


VALUES    AND    THEIR    RATIONALITY  353 

which  the  development  proceeds  are  sustained  and  in- 
formed by  the  Divine  Will,  so  that  in  their  interaction 
and  evolution  they  conspire  to  realise  the  divine  purpose. 
We  may  go  further  and  say,  that  only  a  Supreme  End 
upon  which  all  causal  actings  converge  can  make  the 
world  and  life  a  coherent  and  significant  whole.  That 
experience  does  disclose  such  an  immanent  divine  purpose 
is,  of  course,  more  than  the  present  discussion  pretends 
to  prove.  Metaphysical  problems  must  be  faced  ere 
such  a  conclusion  could  be  reached.  But  it  is  at  least 
important  to  know  that  criticism  justifies  the  validity 
of  teleology,  and  this  in  a  sense  which  leaves  room 
for  the  operation  of  divine  purpose. 

C. — VALUES  AND  THEIR  KATIONALITY. 

The  conception  of  end  is  closely  related  to  that  of 
value,  though  the  one  is  not  exactly  identical  with  the 
other.  Ends  and  values  alike  rest  upon,  and  psychologi- 
cally develop  out  of,  man's  conscious  activity,  and  the  two 
ideas  imply  one  another.  Conative  activity  is  always 
a  striving  towards  some  result,  and  the  satisfaction  in,  or 
the  enjoyment  of,  the  result  constitutes  a  value-feeling. 
These  elementary  feelings  of  satisfaction  and  dissatisfac- 
tion are  the  rudimentary  facts  which  make  spiritual 
development  possible.  A  feeling  of  value  marks  the  fact 
that  conscious  will  has  gained  a  content  more  harmonious 
and  satisfying  than  what  has  gone  before.  Value-feelings 
in  this  way  become  objects  of  desire,  and  the  goal  towards 
which  the  conative  process  is  directed.  Values  which 
thus  become  the  object  of  value -judgments  are  defined  by 
the  reflecting  consciousness  as  ends  or  objects  of  endeavour. 
In  this  manner  the  concept  of  end  is  reached  psychologi- 
cally through  the  concept  of  value.  Between  the  two 
ideas  there  is  this  distinction :  when  we  think  of  value  we 
think  of  satisfaction  in  the  result  of  a  process ;  when  we 
think  of  end  we  think  of  the  process  itself  moving  to  its  goal. 
The  end  gives  stimulus  and  direction  to  endeavour,  while 


354  MODES   OF   RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE 

value  denotes  endeavour  satisfactorily  completed.  The 
bare  notion  of  activity  does  not  yield  the  conception  of 
value  ;  but  activity  is  expressed  in  terms  of  feeling,  and 
differences  of  feeling  are  the  conditions  of  the  elementary 
values.  Psychological  analysis  suggests,  I  venture  to 
think,  the  line  of  advance  is  from  activity,  through 
interest,  to  ideas  of  value  and  to  the  notion  of  end.  The 
interest  which  sustains  and  stimulates  a  psychical  process 
makes  the  activity  involved  explicit  to  consciousness ; x  it 
also  differentiates  and  retains  in  memory  the  feelings  of 
satisfaction  and  dissatisfaction,  as  well  as  the  degrees  of 
pleasure-tone,  which  accompany  activity.  Interest  work- 
ing in  this  fashion  defines  the  values  to  which  activity 
leads ;  and  in  the  absence  of  interest  a  psychical  process 
could  not  have  those  differences  of  feeling  which  are  the 
origin  of  distinctions  of  value.  A  deliberate  purposive 
life  on  man's  part  is  made  possible  by  his  perception  of 
values,  since  the  recognition  of  values  which  are  objects  of 
desire  leads  directly  to  their  definition  as  ends  to  the  will. 
But  the  notion  of  end,  though  it  is  reached  later  in  the 
order  of  psychological  development,  is  prior  in  the  nature 
of  things  to  the  idea  of  value.  For  the  values  which 
man  realises  do  not  depend  merely  on  his  psychical 
constitution:  they  presuppose  a  pre-existing  teleological 
adaptation  or  harmony  between  the  psychical  nature  and 
the  reality  which  is  qualified  as  a  good  when  it  enters 
consciousness.  If  it  be  said  that  values  are  only  real 
in  a  personal  consciousness,  we  agree ;  but  we  reply,  it  is 
impossible  the  whole  wealth  of  values  can  be  evolved 
from  the  constitution  of  the  subject.  Like  all  other 
experiences,  values  depend  on  the  interaction  of  subjective 
and  objective  factors :  values  imply  facts  which  through 
relation  to  the  self  can  become  values ;  and  facts  and 
values  are  teleologically  related. 

The  far-reaching  importance  of  value-ideas  and  value- 
judgments  in  the  ethical  and  religious  organisation  of  life 

1  Cp.  on  this  point,  Lipps,  Vom  Fiihlen,   Wollen,  und  Denken,  1902, 
pp.  232-233. 


VALUES   AND   THEIR    RATIONALITY  355 

has  already  appeared  in  our  previous  discussions.  Eeflec- 
tive  thinking,  working  on  experienced  values,  seeks  in  the 
interests  of  life  to  introduce  order  and  coherency  into 
them,  and  in  this  way  develops  a  system  of  values.  The 
problem  how  to  decide  between  competing  values  could 
only  be  solved  by  the  acceptance  of  a  standard  of  value ; 
and  a  consistent  standard  of  value  could  not  be  secured 
unless  a  central  or  supreme  value  was  presupposed.  The 
possession  of  an  ideal  value  as  a  standard  made  it  possible 
to  organise  the  values  of  life  in  a  graduated  system,  where 
the  lower  stood  to  the  higher  in  the  relation  of  means  to 
end.  The  movement  which  brought  the  idea  of  God  into 
living  relation  with  the  concept  of  value  was  of  the 
highest  significance.  In  particular,  the  ethical  values,  as 
they  gradually  took  form  in  the  historic  life,  served  to 
purify  and  elevate  the  idea  of  God,  the  religious  relation, 
and  the  religious  life.  The  organic  union  of  the  ethical 
and  the  religious  consciousness  was  achieved  by  spiritual 
religion,  which  identifies  God  with  the  perfect  Good  in 
relation  to  which  all  other  goods  receive  their  place  and 
meaning.  This  development  of  an  ultimate  and  funda- 
mental value  is  neither  a  purely  logical  deduction  nor  is 
it  an  inference  from  empirical  facts.  It  is  a  process 
psychological  and  historic,  which  works  itself  out  in 
response  to  the  pressure  of  personal  and  social  needs : 
there  lies  behind  it  the  insistent  desire  on  man's  part  for 
an  ideal  or  chief  Good  which  will  harmonise  and  complete 
the  values  of  experience.  The  ideal  slowly  reveals  itself 
to  human  eyes  amid  the  oppositions  and  conflicts  between 
different  ideas  of  value  struggling  for  supremacy.  The 
appeal  of  the  ideal  is  to  the  spirit,  and  the  mind  or  spirit 
is  the  moving  power  which  impels  man  to  find  the  solution 
of  contending  ideas  of  value  in  a  higher  and  purer  con- 
ception of  good.  The  change  and  growth  of  value-ideas 
are  nowhere  more  clearly  expressed  than  in  the  qualities 
of  the  beings  or  Being  whom  man  makes  the  object  of  his 
reverence  and  trust.  There,  as  it  were  in  a  mirror,  we 
behold  the  reflexion  of  the  advancing  ideal  of  human  good. 


356  MODES   OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

It  is  plain  the  religious  object  and  the  religious 
relation  depend  for  their  content  on  the  value-ideas.  But 
here  again  we  meet  the  old  objection.  Values,  it  is 
argued,  denote  a  purely  human  point  of  view :  they 
represent  phases  of  feeling  which  fluctuate  and  alter,  and 
are  not  valid  truths  of  reason.  In  answer  we  must  show 
that  values  are  more  than  subjective  feelings  which  change 
and  pass,  that  in  some  sense  they  can  claim  objectivity 
and  rationality.  In  what  sense,  then,  are  values  rational  ? 
Now  some  idealistic  thinkers  try  to  make  the  idea  of 
value  coalesce  with  the  rational  or  real ;  but  in  so  doing 
they  are  not,  I  think,  just  to  the  volitional  and  feeling 
aspects  of  value.  We  are  informed,  for  example,  that 
objects  possess  as  much  of  value  as  they  possess  of  reality 
and  trueness.  We  reply  that,  if  it  were  possible  to  judge 
from  the  standpoint  of  absolute  knowledge,  it  might  be  so ; 
but  we  cannot  do  this,  and  the  historic  values  must  be 
understood  psychologically  rather  than  metaphysically. 
Again,  while  it  is  true  that  thought  can  modify  our 
feelings  of  value,  it  does  not  seem  to  be  the  case  that 
value  as  satisfaction  depends  on  the  logical  stability  of  the 
objects  of  desire.1  For  the  centre  of  value  lies  in  the 
subject,  and  in  the  way  it  reacts  on  the  object,  rather  than 
in  the  character  of  the  object.  The  essence  of  value,  that  is 
to  say,  lies  in  the  experient  subject,  and  we  cannot  transfer 
it  to  a  system  which  somehow  transcends  the  subject. 

But  though  we  do  not  think  the  problem  can  be 
solved  on  these  lines,  there  is  an  element  of  truth  in  the 
view  we  have  been  criticising.  For  values  cannot  be 
fundamentally  irrational,  if  they  are  to  maintain  them- 

1  Vid.  Bosanquet,  op.  cit.  p.  293  ff.  Prof.  Bosanquet  seeks  to  reduce 
value  to  rationality  by  arguing  skilfully  that  value  depends  on  conditions 
which  transcend  the  experient  subject,  that  these  conditions  can  only  be 
fulfilled  in  a  systematic  whole,  and  ultimately  in  the  universe  as  a  concrete 
universal  or  individual  totality.  There  is  this  amount  of  truth  in  his 
theory  :  the  whole  content  of  values  cannot,  as  we  have  already  argued, 
be  derived  from  the  nature  of  valuing  subjects.  But  such  types  of 
philosophy  can  never  show  us  how  to  pass  from  metaphysical  value,  as 
perfection  of  structure,  to  the  values  of  the  historic  life. 


VALUES   AND   THEIR    RATIONALITY  357 

selves  as  values.  Nevertheless  it  profits  little  to  say 
values  are  in  some  sense  rational,  unless  you  make  it 
more  clear  what  you  mean  by  rationality  in  this  con- 
nexion.1 Speaking  generally,  to  be  reasonable,  I  take  it, 
means  that  the  elements  of  experience  cohere  with  and 
imply  one  another,  so  that  we  recognise  the  way  in  which 
one  element  is  connected  with  others,  and  how  all  unite 
to  form  a  systematic  whole.  Eationality,  in  other  words, 
signifies  systematic  insight.  We  have  already  agreed  that 
rationality  so  conceived  is  an  ideal  never  completely 
realised,  though  the  process  of  rationalising  may  be  carried 
further  in  one  field  than  in  another.  Now  when  we 
examine  the  values  of  experience,  we  soon  become  aware 
that  they  cannot  be  interpreted  and  understood  as  though 
they  were  simply  a  part  of  the  realm  of  scientific  facts. 
The  ethical  and  religious  values,  it  is  true,  develop  within 
a  world  of  facts,  and  these  facts  in  turn  can  assume  the 
character  of  values  for  subjects  which  experience  them. 
But  we  can  neither  demonstrate  the  identity  of  facts  and 
values,  nor  can  we  establish  a  definite  causal  relation 
between  them.  The  two  ideas  will  not  coalesce,  nor  will 
the  one  explain  the  other.  Again,  if  we  confine  ourselves 
to  the  realm  of  values,  we  may  try  to  understand  them 
in  their  connexions  with  one  another;  but  this  under- 
standing never  amounts  to  a  rational  comprehension.  In 
other  words,  it  is  not  possible  for  us  to  attain  that  degree 
of  insight  which  would  enable  us  to  deduce  one  value  from 
another,  or  to  show  why  a  given  value-feeling  should  have 
the  precise  character  it  has.  Values  can  only  be  known 
through  being  experienced,  and  that  experience  involves 
volitional  and  feeling  factors  which  are  not  reducible  to 
rational  relations.  Hence  the  values  of  life  are  found  and 


1  Prof.  Ladd  appears  to  be  guilty  of  this  kind  of  vagueness  when  he 
speaks  of  the  rationality  of  values  ;  and  the  relation  of  the  two  conceptions 
demands  a  closer  examination  than  he  has  given  to  it.  In  one  place  he 
remarks:  "Using  the  words  in  an  admittedly  loose  but,  as  we  believe, 
defensible  meaning,  it  may  be  said  that  rationality  is  the  ultimate  test  of 
the  values  of  religion,"  Philosophy  of  Heligion,  vol.  ii.  p.  80. 


358  MODES    OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

enjoyed  by  us  rather  than  rationally  apprehended ;  and 
though  thought  is  active  in  the  formation  of  judgments  of 
value,  it  does  not  play  an  exclusive  part. 

Yet  thought  undoubtedly  has  a  function  in  the 
development  of  value-ideas,  and  they  forget  this  who  say 
that  values  are  altogether  non-rational.  In  abstraction 
from  thinking,  value-feelings  would  remain  isolated  and 
fleeting  experiences,  and  could  not  enter  into  the  forma- 
tion of  ethical  character.  The  process  by  which  feelings 
of  value  are  made  explicit  and  receive  a  fixed  and  general 
form  in  judgments  of  value,  also  by  which  the  latter  in 
turn  are  co-ordinated  in  a  system  of  values,  is  a  process 
made  possible  by  the  fact  that  man  is  a  thinking  being. 
In  short,  though  thought  does  not  constitute  our  value- 
experiences,  it  operates  on  these  experiences  and  gives 
them  a  form  fitted  to  the  life  of  a  rational  person.  The 
graduation  of  values  and  their  organisation  depend  on 
man's  rational  activity,  and  are  its  expression :  and  in  this 
sense  the  insight  which  enables  man  to  systematise  his 
conduct  by  making  lesser  values  instrumental  to  a  supreme 
value  may  be  termed  a  rational  insight.1  But  it  should  be 
noted  that  the  connexion  of  values  developed  in  this  way 
is  practical  and  teleological,  and  is  not  equivalent  to  a 
rational  explanation.  Though  reason  co-operates  in  the 
realisation  of  values,  it  does  not  rationalise  them  in  the 
sense  of  establishing  an  identity  between  itself  and  them. 

It  may  be  said  that  even  on  the  foregoing  statement, 
the  rationality  of  values  is  sacrificed,  and  their  claim  to 
universality  and  objectivity  is  surrendered.  If  this 
criticism  is  valid,  the  use  of  value-ideas  by  the  religious 
consciousness  would  no  longer  be  justified.  Now  in  answer 
to  this  objection,  we  ask  the  reader  to  remember  in 
the  first  place,  that,  if  complete  rationality  is  to  be  the 
test  of  objectivity,  the  test  is  one  which  cannot  be  passed 
anywhere.  For  perfect  rationality  is  an  ideal  never  fully 
realised.  On  the  other  hand,  though  reason  and  value 

1  For  some  suggestive  remarks  on  the  rationality  of  ethical  valuation, 
vid.  Hoffding's  Philosophische  Problems,  p.  90  ff. 


VALUES    AND    THEIR   RATIONALITY  359 

cannot  be  made  to  coalesce  by  us,  it  is  a  mistake  to  say 
they  are  dualistically  opposed ;  on  the  contrary,  they 
display  adaptation  to  one  another,  and  both  co-operate  in 
the  interests  of  life.  They  work  in  concord  within  the 
purposive  life  of  man  and  combine  to  subserve  spiritual 
ends.  In  fulfilment  of  their  teleological  office  they  develop 
norms  or  standards:  in  the  one  case  norms  of  truth,  in 
the  other  norms  of  value.  Between  rationality  and 
value  there  is  a  difference,  never  a  separation  :  value  has 
its  rational  aspect  and  reason  its  value-aspect.  The  ideal 
of  reason  is  coherent  thinking,  and  the  ideal  of  value  is 
harmonious  living ;  but  in  neither  case  is  the  ideal  purely 
theoretical  or  purely  practical.  To  set  the  theoretical 
activity  in  opposition  to  the  practical,  and  assign  to  the 
former  a  validity  which  the  latter  does  not  share,  is  in 
effect  to  make  a  separation  which  does  not  exist  in  experi- 
ence. And  if  we  consider  on  what  grounds  we  claim 
objectivity  for  reason,  we  shall  find  they  correspond  closely 
to  those  on  which  we  claim  objectivity  for  value.  The 
demand  that  the  principles  of  reason  shall  hold  in  the 
real  world  cannot  be  turned  into  a  demonstration  that 
they  actually  do  so :  the  demand  is  a  postulate  of  thought 
which  justifies  itself  by  its  results.  That  our  ideals  of 
value  shall  rule  in  the  experienced  world  is  likewise  a 
postulate  which  approves  itself  by  its  working.  Both 
postulates  proceed  from  the  purposive  life  of  man :  they 
are  demands  of  the  will.  Man  must  rationalise  as  well  as 
valuate  in  the  fulfilment  of  his  vocation ;  and  rationality 
and  value  are  alike  necessary  to  give  meaning  to  life. 
Instead  of  being  sharply  opposed  they  harmoniously  unite 
to  realise  the  idea  of  the  Good.  When  man  seeks  to 
conceive  that  Ultimate  Ground  of  things  on  which  the 
teleological  structure  of  the  universe  depends,  he  is  justi- 
fied in  interpreting  it  through  those  ideas  which  have 
proved  essential  to  the  significance  and  worth  of  experi- 
ence. In  so  doing  he  carries  out  the  teleological  method 
to  its  final  postulate,  the  postulate  which  ensures  the  unity 
and  validity  of  all  truths  and  values.  God  is  the  final 


360  MODES   OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

presupposition  of  all  that  is  true  and  good,  and  the  assur- 
ance of  their  final  harmony. 

D. — THE  IDEA  OF  TRUTH  IN  EELIGION. 

We  have  now  reached  a  stage  when  we  may  ask  a 
further  question,  and  it  is  an  important  one :  What  do  we 
mean  when  we  say  a  religious  belief  or  doctrine  is  true  ? 
We  are  really  here  only  putting  in  a  more  general  form 
the  problem  which  lay  behind  our  discussion  of  the  validity 
of  analogies,  ends,  and  values.  The  standpoint  from  which 
we  shall  treat  this  question  will  be  epistemological  rather 
than  metaphysical.  In  other  words,  we  are  not  to  deal 
now  with  the  problem  of  the  ultimate  reality  of  religion, 
but  we  are  going  to  inquire  on  what  grounds  we  adjudi- 
cate on  the  claim  to  truth  made  in  behalf  of  religious 
beliefs.  Of  course  an  inquiry  of  this  sort  runs  into  the 
larger  question  of  the  nature  of  truth  in  general,  for 
religious  truths  cannot  form  a  class  by  themselves.  To 
some  extent,  therefore,  we  may  have  to  touch  on  current 
controversies  about  the  nature  of  truth,  but  we  will  keep 
in  view  throughout  the  religious  bearing  of  the  subject. 

Truth  is  one  of  those  very  common  words  which  we 
use  daily  and  assume  we  understand  perfectly;  and  yet 
the  conception  of  truth  under  close  scrutiny  becomes 
difficult  and  baffling.  We  find,  after  reflexion  and 
criticism,  that  assumptions  we  are  all  in  the  habit  of 
making  fail  to  justify  themselves.  It  is  easy,  for  in- 
stance, to  say  that  truth  is  '  conformity  to  facts/  But  it 
very  soon  appears  that  facts  are  not  the  simple  and 
palpable  things  the  naive  person  takes  them  to  be.  The 
legal  mind,  at  least,  is  well  aware  how  easy  it  is  to 
confound  '  facts '  with  inferences,  and  how  readily  we  see 
what  we  desire  to  see.  At  the  same  time  the  common 
idea  that  truth  is  '  correspondence  with  facts '  is  often 
quite  sufficient  for  certain  purposes.  For  instance,  a 
report  is  designated  true  when  it  accurately  describes 
what  took  place,  or  a  photograph  because  it  accurately 


TRUTH    IN    RELIGION  361 

reproduces  the  lineaments  of  the  object.  Now,  can  we 
apply  this  idea  of  correspondence  to  religious  truth  ?  We 
have  already  noted  how  the  religious  consciousness  claims 
reality  for  its  conceptions :  the  religious  man  thinks  God 
is  what  he  thinks  him  to  be.  We  must  neither  ignore  nor 
minimise  this  claim,  if  we  are  to  be  just  to  the  facts  of 
spiritual  experience.  But  how  are  we  to  interpret  this 
feeling  of  reality  ?  We  fully  admit  the  religious  spirit 
cannot  maintain  itself  if  it  harbours  the  doubt  that  this 
reality-feeling  may  be  purely  illusory.  On  the  other  hand, 
can  we  believe  our  religious  ideas  are  in  some  way  copies 
of  reality  ?  Can  we  suppose  the  religious  subject  draws 
an  accurate  copy  of  the  divine  object,  and  reproduces  its 
characteristics  in  detail  ?  If  the  answer  be  in  the  affirma- 
tive, it  would  mean  that  religious  truth  is  reduced  to 
correct  portraiture.  But  this  conception  of  a  correspon- 
dence of  our  ideas  with  a  transcendent  Being  is  a  very 
difficult  one  to  carry  out ;  and  it  is  not  apparent  how 
correspondence  in  this  instance  could  become  an  effective 
test  of  truth.  For  it  is  futile  in  this  case  to  appeal  to 
an  independent  reality  by  reference  to  which  we  might 
test  the  correctness  of  our  notions.  The  idea  of  God  is 
developed  in  the  medium  of  religious  experience,  and  we 
can  have  no  direct  knowledge  of  Deity  as  he  is  in  himself. 
God  is  for  man  what  he  experiences  him  to  be,  and  man 
cannot  go  outside  these  changing  experiences  and  set  up  a 
standard  of  spiritual  truth  which  is  independent  of  his  own 
mind.  And  if  a  reality  lies  beyond  our  mind,  we  cannot 
know  whether  our  ideas  '  correspond  '  with  it  or  not.  In 
discussing  the  validity  of  our  ideas  in  general,  we  came  to 
conclude  that  the  essential  point  was  not  correspondence 
with  a  transsubjective  reality,  but  adequate  interpretation 
of  it ;  and  the  same  holds  good  of  religious  ideas.  The 
notion  of  adequacy  is  wider  and  more  flexible  than  that 
of  correspondence,  and  is  free  of  the  implication  of  the 
reproduction  of  details.  A  religious  idea  which  was 
adequate  would  be  one  which  set  man  in  satisfactory 
relations  with  the  object,  and  that  both  in  regard  to 


362  MODES    OF   RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

thought  and  practice.  In  the  degree  that  religious  ideas 
were  adequate  they  would  be  true.  Of  course  we  can  as 
little  test  adequacy  by  reference  to  an  independent  reality 
as  we  can  correspondence ;  for  we  cannot  reach  such  a 
reality  to  decide  whether  our  idea  of  it  is  adequate  or 
not.  But,  though  comparison  of  our  conceptions  with  the 
transcendent  Eeality  is  not  possible,  there  is  still  the  test 
which  is  afforded  by  the  working  of  these  conceptions 
within  experience.  More  particularly  we  can  try  to 
verify  religious  ideas  by  showing  that  they  enter  into 
harmonious  relations  with  the  other  elements  in  the  body 
of  knowledge.  They  then  share  in  the  strength  of  a 
structure  the  parts  of  which  mutually  support  one 
another.  Failure  to  cohere,  when  it  amounts  to  positive 
inconsistency,  is  a  sign  of  error ;  and  in  the  development 
of  religion  we  find  that  religious  doctrines  are  condemned 
as  untrue  when  they  contradict  the  body  of  assured 
knowledge.  Thus  monotheism  justifies  itself  by  the  way 
in  which  it  enters  into  harmonious  relations  with  our 
scientific  understanding  of  the  unity  of  the  world,  while 
polytheism  is  condemned  by  its  inconsistency  with 
knowledge.  Coherency  with  the  system  of  knowledge 
thus  furnishes  a  means  by  which  the  adequacy  of  some 
religious  ideas  may  be  tested. 

We  say  some,  because  every  religious  doctrine  cannot 
be  verified  by  this  method.  The  ideas,  for  example,  which 
are  involved  in  the  deeper  and  more  spiritual  religious 
experiences  cannot  be  brought  into  close  relations  with 
the  body  of  scientific  knowledge,  and  our  theoretical 
reason  cannot  yield  a  positive  criterion  of  their  truth. 
Take  for  an  illustration  the  doctrine  of  a  divine  grace 
given  to  the  Christian,  in  virtue  of  which  he  is  able  to 
overcome  temptation  and  to  continue  steadfast  in  well- 
doing. This  conception  of  divine  strength  '  made  perfect ' 
in  human  weakness,  can  neither  be  proved  nor  disproved 
by  theoretical  knowledge.  At  most  we  can  say  it  is  not 
inconsistent  with  the  actual  body  of  knowledge :  science 
leaves  room  for  it,  though  it  cannot  confirm  it.  In  this 


TRUTH   IN    RELIGION  363 

dilemma  we  are  thrown  back  on  the  nature  and  working 
of  the  experience  itself,  if  we  are  to  justify  the  claim  to 
truth  made  on  its  behalf.  Is  there  something  in  the 
experience  itself  or  its  results  which  serves  to  verify  it  ? 
Now  there  are  some  who  will  plead  that  in  and  with  the 
experience  there  is  given  to  them  an  immediate  certainty 
of  its  truth ;  and  personal  testimony  of  this  kind,  simply 
and  sincerely  given,  is  impressive.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  more  is  here  than  pure  experience ;  there  is  in- 
terpretation and  there  is  inference.  And  where  an 
experience  involves  these,  the  possibility  of  error  is 
present.  When  all  is  said  there  attaches  to  such  a 
judgment  as  "  Divine  Grace  enabled  me  to  overcome  that 
temptation "  an  element  of  subjectivity ;  and  though 
personal  conviction  may  be  strong,  we  cannot  make  this 
individual  feeling  of  certainty  a  sufficient  witness  to  a 
universal  truth.  Under  these  circumstances  the  dynamic, 
or  the  pragmatic,  test  of  truth  will  be  found  valuable ; 
and  it  is  applicable  here  where  verification  through 
coherency  with  the  system  of  knowledge  fails  us,  and 
where  the  immediate  judgment  of  self-consciousness  is 
insufficient.  We  ask  then,  what  is  the  practical  value  of 
the  belief  which  claims  to  be  true  ?  Does  it  work  well  in 
experience  and  lead  to  satisfactory  results  ?  If  the  faith 
in  question  has,  under  various  conditions,  steadily  borne 
good  fruit,  that  is  to  say  has  proved  itself  a  dynamic 
value,  there  is  a  strong  prima  facie  case  for  taking  it  to 
be  true,  though,  of  course,  the  cogency  of  theoretical  proof 
is  absent.  But  while  in  certain  cases  the  pragmatic 
criterion  of  truth  is  applicable,  and  perhaps  the  only  one 
available,  it  is  certainly  not  the  sole  criterion.  None  the 
less  it  is  sometimes  valuable,  and  especially  so  in  religion 
where  the  deeper  spiritual  experiences  are  concerned. 
"By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them."  A  faith  which 
enables  religious  men  to  overcome  the  evil,  and  victoriously 
to  bear  the  burden  and  heat  of  life's  day,  is  in  process  of 
verifying  itself. 

Those  critically  disposed  may  object,  that  the  principle 


364  MODES   OF   RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE 

of  working- value  is  not  the  plain  and  simple  thing  which, 
at  first  blush,  it  appears  to  be.1  For  principles  work 
differently  in  different  persons  and  in  different  societies 
and  times,  and  what  approves  itself  a  practical  value  to 
one  man  may  not  do  so  to  another.  In  reply  it  must  be 
pointed  out, — and  here  I  may  be  allowed  to  repeat  what 
was  said  previously — we  are  by  no  means  shut  up  to  the 
conclusion  that  what  approves  itself  practically  valuable 
to  the  individual  is  thereby  true.  No  more  in  religion 
than  in  science  can  truths  be  purely  individual  judgments. 
The  religious  values,  we  have  frequently  urged,  are  not 
individual  creations,  but  grow  out  of  the  historic  life ;  and 
we  may  very  properly  extend  the  notion  of  practical  value 
to  the  way  a  spiritual  idea  or  principle  works  and  has 
worked  in  the  course  of  historic  development.  Such 
historic  testimony  has  a  weight  which  no  individual 
witness  can  claim.  Principles  or  doctrines  which  have 
won  their  way,  and  established  themselves  in  the  wide 
field  of  history,  come  down  to  us  with  good  credentials, 
and  religious  people  are  fully  justified  in  laying  the  stress 
they  do  on  this  form  of  argument.  For  that  which  works 
^  continuously  for  good  must  be  in  harmony  with  the  nature 
of  man  and  of  the  world  in  which  he  is  placed.  So  beliefs 
can  only  grow  into  spiritual  convictions  through  being 
tested  and  acted  on  in  life.  The  act  of  assent  to  a 
religious  doctrine  does  not  in  itself  mean  much ;  but 
when  its  practical  value  has  been  fully  proved  it  enters 
into  the  living  substance  of  faith.  Hence  the  Christian 
principle,  that  by  '  doing  the  will  of  God '  men  come  to 
know  the  '  truth  of  the  doctrine.' 

We  conclude,  then,  that  the  criterion  of  working-value 
can  sometimes  be  taken  as  a  criterion  of  religious  truth, 
and  there  are  instances  where  it  is  the  best  available.  But 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  its  cogency  will  always  be  less 
than  that  of  logical  proof.  As  a  matter  of  logical  form  we 
cannot  pass  from  "  All  that  is  true  works  "  to  "  All  that 

1  Cp.  with  what  follows  the  previous  remarks  on  validity  and  working- 
value,  pp.  260-262. 


TRUTH   IN    RELIGION  365 

works  is  true  " ;  and  as  a  matter  of  actual  experience  we 
find  that  some  religious  beliefs,  which  seemed  to  work  well 
during  certain  periods  and  in  particular  social  systems, 
have  not  in  other  times  and  circumstances  been  productive 
of  good.  The  difficulty  in  the  case  of  a  test  of  this  kind  is 
to  make  it  searching  and  exhaustive,  so  that  it  could  be 
taken  for  final.  From  a  logical  point  of  view  the  negative 
side  of  the  principle  is  quite  defensible  ;  for  if  all  truth 
works,  then  what  does  not  work  cannot  be  true.  But  the 
intricacies  of  experience  escape  the  clear-cut  forms  of  logic. 
History  does  not  usually  record  plain  cases  either  of  success 
or  failure  in  the  working  of  a  belief :  we  more  often  find 
partial  success,  or  success  here  and  failure  there.  To  over- 
come this  difficulty  it  would  be  fatal  to  put  forward  the 
theory,  that  so  long  as  a  religious  idea  works  it  is  true, 
when  it  ceases  to  work  it  becomes  untrue,  and  if  at  some 
future  time  it  again  begins  to  work  it  once  more  becomes 
true.  For  to  truth  must  belong  the  note  of  universality 
and  constancy :  and  we  sacrifice  its  character  if  we  say  the 
individual  man  is  the  measure,  and  so  long  as  he  finds  an 
idea  serviceable  it  is  true  for  him.  It  follows,  therefore, 
that  only  beliefs  which  prove  themselves  working-values 
in  a  sustained  and  continuous  fashion  can  lay  plausible 
claim  to  truth.  Moreover,  while  the  evidence  of  practical 
value  can  give  good  ground  for  personal  conviction,  it  does 
not  strictly  establish  theoretical  universality  and  necessity.-' 
At  the  best  the  conception  of  working- value  is  provisional, 
and  points  beyond  itself  for  its  explanation.  A  principle 
does  not  work  on  some  authority  of  its  own,  nor  can  a 
human  will,  however  strenuous,  make  any  idea  in  which  it 
believes  work.  Facts,  we  have  found,  are  not  identical 
with  values,  and  a  value  in  any  form  is  ultimately  depen- 
dent on  those  elements  of  reality  within  which  it  operates.1 

1  It  is  just  on  the  implications  of  the  term  working  that  Pragmatism  is 
least  convincing.  The  pragmatist  apparently  would  not  commit  himself  to 
the  proposition  that  everything  which  works  is  true.  Yet  it  is  not  clear 
what  further  test  he  would  apply  in  order  to  decide  truth-claims,  for  he 
finds  neither  *  correspondence '  nor  *  coherency '  satisfactory  as  a  criterion. 


366  MODES   OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

The  realm  of  values  is  made  possible  through  the  inter- 
action of  valuing  subjects  with  the  system  of  existences 
within  which  they  live  and  feel  and  act ;  and  a  principle 
that  works  must  depend  on  the  harmony  of  the  factors, 
subjective  and  objective,  which  are  involved.  Hence  an 
examination  of  the  notion  of  working  brings  us  back  to  the 
principle  that  an  idea  is  valid  when  it  adequately  interprets 
the  object  in  its  relation  to  the  subject ;  and  an  idea  thus 
adequate  is  true,  and  therefore  valuable.  The  mere  '  will 
to  believe'  cannot  make  a  notion  true,  unless  the  notion 
in  some  way  satisfactorily  interprets  the  real  and  so  brings 
us  into  satisfying  relations  with  it.  The  natural  tendency 
of  human  judgment  is  to  outrun  the  data  which  it  seeks  to 
construe ;  and  here  lies  the  possibility  of  error :  the  fact 
that  a  judgment  works  badly  is  a  token  it  does  not  interpret 
rightly,  and  therefore  contains  error. 

Now  truth  in  the  sense  of  adequate  interpretation  is 
sometimes  capable  of  a  sufficiently  easy  verification.  This 
is  the  case  in  the  region  of  sense-perception.  I  judge  a 
tree  in  the  distance  to  be  an  oak,  but  on  closer  approach  it 
turns  out  to  be  an  elm :  here  the  means  of  verification  are 
at  my  disposal  by  which  I  can  test  my  first  inference. 
But  the  judgments  of  the  religious  consciousness,  we  have 
seen,  are  not  to  be  established  or  rectified  in  this  simple 
and  convincing  way.  The  savage  who  pronounces  a  tree 
to  be  inhabited  by  a  spirit  which  can  help  or  harm  him 
cannot  be  disillusioned  by  an  appeal  to  the  senses,  and  the 
same  is  true  of  the  ancient  citizen  who  believed  in  the 
reality  and  efficiency  of  the  gods  of  the  state.  In  the 

But  it  seems  to  me  in  the  conception  of  '  working '  there  is  implied  in  some 
form  a  harmony  or  coherence  between  the  idna  and  the  environment  in 
which  it  operates.  On  the  other  hand,  pragmatists  like  the  late  Prof. 
James  and  Dr.  Schiller  have  done  excellent  service  by  challenging  traditional 
views  about  truth.  They  have  justly  insisted  on  the  purposive  aspect  of 
thought,  the  necessity  of  taking  the  problem  of  truth  along  with  that  of 
error,  and  the  futility  of  a  transcendent  and  impersonal  standard  of  truth. 
Mr.  Joachim,  in  his  book  on  The  Nature  of  Truth,  has  the  merit  of  showing, 
by  his  own  admitted  failure  to  solve  the  problem,  that  in  a  purely  monistic 
philosophy  the  conception  of  truth  cannot  be  thought  out  consistently. 


TRUTH   IN    RELIGION  367 

domain  of  religious  belief  there  is  no  short  and  sure  way 
of  convincing  men  of  error,  and  the  religious  person  has  a 
great  capacity  of  explaining  away  results  which  appear 
unfavourable  to  a  belief  he  is  disposed  to  cherish.  In  fact, 
as  we  have  already  suggested,  religious  ideas  are  only 
gradually  felt  to  be  inadequate.  Ancient  beliefs  fade 
slowly,  and  they  are  finally  judged  to  be  untrue,  because 
views  of  life  and  conceptions  of  the  world  have  developed 
with  which  they  will  not  harmonise.  The  old  gods  pass 
because  they  belong  to  an  order  of  things  which  man  has 
transcended,  and  their  forms  can  no  longer  find  a  place  in 
the  enlarged  structure  of  knowledge.  This  idea  of  coher- 
ency, in  the  wide  sense  of  consistency  with  theoretical  and 
practical  knowledge,  becomes  then  an  ampler  test  of  the 
adequacy  of  religious  ideas  for  which  truth  is  claimed. 
When  the  evidence  of  inconsistency  with  reason,  of  conflict 
with  the  assured  results  of  rational  thought,  is  clear,  there 
are  the  strongest  grounds  for  rejecting  a  belief,  even  though 
it  has  proved  useful  in  its  day.  The  appearance  of  an 
incoherence  of  this  kind  is  a  challenge  to  thought,  it  is  a 
call  to  think  out  the  implications  of  a  doctrine  in  relation 
to  the  body  of  knowledge,  in  order  to  determine  if  possible 
its  validity.  Nor  can  universality  and  objectivity  be 
firmly  established  apart  from  the  support  of  the  theoretical 
consciousness.  When  reason  is  altogether  silent,  there 
may  be  personal  conviction  on  which  the  individual  is  fully 
prepared  to  act  and  is  justified  in  being  so,  but  there 
cannot  be  necessity  of  belief. 

Let  us  try  to  gather  together  the  scattered  threads  of 
the  argument,  and  state  our  general  conclusions.  Truth  is 
always  a  form  of  satisfaction,  and  in  religion  it  implies  the 
satisfaction  of  man's  rational  and  practical  nature.  Spiri- 
tual or  religious  satisfaction  which  means  truth,  means  also 
that  man  is  in  harmony  with  God,  the  world,  and  other 
men,  so  that  his  spiritual  nature  is  in  harmony  with  itself. 
Hence  the  solidarity  of  religious  truths,  for  they  all  lead 
up  to  and  find  their  consummation  in  a  supreme  truth. 
Just  as  the  realm  of  ends  finds  its  goal  in  an  ultimate  end. 


368  MODES   OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

so  the  spiritual  truths,  which  mark  the  way  to  the  end, 
reach  their  completion  in  an  ultimate  truth.  But  the 
unity  of  truth  is  only  partially  realised  by  us,  and  there  is 
no  single  test  by  which  we  can  determine  the  validity  of 
every  judgment  which  claims  to  be  true.  Nor  will  this 
surprise  those  who  remember  that  the  nature  of  man  is  a 
concrete  whole  which  includes  thinking,  feeling,  and  willing. 
In  the  degree  that  a  religious  doctrine  satisfies  thought, 
and  ministers  to  the  practical  and  inner  life  of  man,  is  its 
validity  assured.  In  other  words,  if  truth  is  what  satisfies 
the  whole  man,  a  religious  doctrine  which  claims  to  be  true 
can  best  substantiate  its  claim  by  approving  itself  both  a 
theoretical  and  a  practical  value.  Beyond  question  there 
are  religious  doctrines,  which  have  grown  out  of  a  genuine 
spiritual  experience,  that  cannot  be  validated  by  the 
theoretical  consciousness.  Yet  in  such  cases  the  claim  of 
reason  will  receive  acknowledgment,  and  religious  faith  will 
be  strengthened,  if  it  can  be  shown  that  these  doctrines  do 
not  involve  propositions  which  are  in  any  way  inconsistent 
with  the  accepted  results  of  theoretical  knowledge.  In 
particular,  the  religious  philosopher  will  be  very  slow  to 
admit  the  claim  of  religious  emotion  and  sentiment  to 
decide  a  matter  of  religious  truth.  With  the  ordinary 
mind  the  witness  of  feeling  counts  for  much,  and  certainty 
tends  to  be  measured  by  the  intensity  of  emotional  convic- 
tion. Confronted  with  hostile  evidences  which  he  cannot 
refute,  the  devotee  will  still  cling  to  his  belief,  because  he 
*  feels  it  to  be  true.'  But  the  unreliability  of  this  testi- 
mony, if  it  stands  alone,  is  transparent ;  and  to  take  it  for 
sufficient  would  be  tantamount  to  abandoning  any  objective 
standard  of  truth  in  religion.  For  doctrines  quite  incon- 
sistent with  one  another  and  with  scientific  knowledge  have 
at  one  time  or  another  been  vouched  for  in  this  fashion. 
Feeling-values  fluctuate,  and  they  cannot  give  the  stability 
we  demand  for  the  conception  of  truth. 

A  wider  and  more  reliable  test  of  the  validity  of 
religious  ideas  is  found  where  the  witness  of  the  feelings 
is  supplemented  and  confirmed  by  the  working  of  the 


TRUTH    IN    RELIGION  369 

will.  The  doctrine  in  this  case  is  acted  on,  and  so 
brought  into  intimate  relation  with  the  world  in  which 
man  plays ,  a  part.  When  an  idea  leads  to  satisfactory 
results  both  in  the  individual  life  and  the  social  medium, 
this  dynamic  efficiency  constitutes  a  proper  claim  to  truth. 
And  the  claim  gathers  weight  when  it  gains  support  over 
a  wide  range  of  space  and  time.  That  theism  as  a 
religious  belief  produces  better  spiritual  and  practical 
results  than  polytheism  and  pantheism,  is  good  evidence  in 
its  favour.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  given  reasons  for 
holding  that  even  the  test  of  working-value  is  not  in 
practice  final  and  complete.  Ideas  which  have  done  good 
service  at  one  stage  of  development  often  require  to  be 
revised  and  restated  in  the  light  of  fuller  knowledge. 
Hence  some  further  test  is  desirable.  In  the  evolution 
of  the  individual,  feeling  and  will  are  crowned  and  com- 
pleted by  thought ;  and  thought,  which  ever  seeks  con- 
nexion and  system  in  experience,  plays  an  important  part 
in  verifying  claims  and  establishing  truth.  Eeligious 
belief  and  doctrines  have  a  cognitive  aspect,  and,  in  virtue 
of  this,  thought  has  the  right  to  examine  them  and  to 
test,  so  far  as  that  is  possible,  their  consistency  with  the 
articulated  whole  of  knowledge.  Where  applicable,  reason 
is  the  most  adequate  criterion :  feeling  is  individual ; 
working  value  has  a  social  and  historic  aspect;  but 
thought  is  universal.  And  reflective  thinking  alone 
makes  it  possible  to  connect  and  compare  the  religious 
experience  with  experience  as  a  whole.  Only  by  rational 
thought  can  we  take  the  ideas  through  which  the  religious 
mind  interprets  its  experience,  and  make  proof  of  their 
coherency  with  scientific  and  speculative  doctrines.  Philo- 
sophical conceptions  change,  and  we  admit  they  are  not 
an  infallible  guide  to  the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  religious 
ideas.  But  they  represent  the  toil  of  the  human  spirit  in 
its  endeavour  to  understand  the  world  ;  and  if  they  must 
be  tested  by  religious  experience,  religious  beliefs  must 
likewise  be  tested  by  them.  Coherency  between  all  the 
elements  of  our  experienced  world  is  the  most  complete 


370  MODES   OF    RELIGIOUS    KNOWLEDGE 

criterion  of  truth.  In  reality,  however,  the  religious 
philosopher  has  to  be  content  with  less  than  complete 
coherency ;  and  it  is  essential  he  should  try  to  show  that 
the  theoretical  and  the  practical  consciousness  supplement 
and  confirm  one  another.  The  task  of  explaining  the 
meaning  and  of  determining  the  truth  of  religious  experi- 
ence, as  an  aspect  of  the  whole  of  experience,  is  the  final 
task  of  a  Philosophy  of  Eeligion.  In  proceeding  to  deal 
with  this  problem  we  enter  the  region  of  Ontology:  we 
face  the  question  of  the  ultimate  nature  and  meaning  of 
religion. 


PART   III. 

THE  ULTIMATE  TRUTH  OF  RELIGION 
(ONTOLOGICAL). 

CHAPTER   X. 

A  SPECULATIVE  THEORY  OF  RELIGION: 
ITS  DATA  AND  AIM. 

A. — THE  DATA  AND  THE  PROBLEM  THEY  RAISE. 

BEFORE  we  turn  to  a  new  aspect  of  our  problem,  let  us 
look  back  for  a  moment  on  the  path  we  have  already 
traversed.  So  far  we  have  said  nothing  about  what  may 
be  called  the  Metaphysics  of  Religion.  We  have  regarded 
religion  as  a  historic  fact,  tried  to  describe  its  psychical 
features,  indicated  its  value  in  the  complex  life  of  culture, 
and  considered  its  essential  nature  revealed  in  the  course 
of  development.  Description,  arrangement  of  materials, 
and  psychological  explanation  do  not  carry  us  beyond  the 
phenomenological  sphere:  they  do  not  determine  the 
validity  of  religious  beliefs,  and  the  question  of  their 
truth  is  pressed  upon  us.  Preliminary  to  this  question 
it  was  necessary  to  say  something  on  the  character  of 
human  knowledge,  and  the  principles  and  methods  which 
it  involved.  For  scepticism  on  the  validity  of  knowledge 
must  react  injuriously  upon  religion,  which  makes  a  claim 
to  know.  In  this  connexion  it  seemed  very  desirable  to 
examine  the  modes  of  religious  knowledge  in  order  to 
make  clear,  if  possible,  the  degree  of  validity  which 
attached  to  them.  The  outcome  of  this  inquiry  went  to 
confirm  our  belief  in  the  validity  of  knowledge ;  and  it 

371 


372          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

also  served  to  show  that  the  modes  of  religious  knowledge 
could  be  justified,  because  they  were  capable  of  conveying 
truth,  though  not  in  a  perfect  or  scientific  form.  At  the 
beginning  of  our  course,  and  looking  ahead,  we  described 
in  a  general  way  the  problem  and  method  which  a  Philo- 
sophy of  Eeligion  should  follow  in  dealing  with  the 
abundant  materials  and  the  different  disciplines  of  which  it 
must  take  cognisance.  But,  at  the  stage  we  have  now 
reached,  the  religious  problem  assumes  a  definite  and  an 
urgent  form  which  raises  a  fundamental  issue.  The 
general  assurance  of  the  validity  of  knowledge,  though 
most  important,  does  not  carry  us  far  enough,  and  the 
question  of  the  truth  of  religious  ideas  has  to  be  faced.  It 
is  not  surprising  that  beliefs  which  are  so  largely  influenced 
by  emotional  needs  and  practical  motives  should  have  their 
theoretical  value  doubted ;  and  this  doubt  must  be  frankly 
met  and,  if  possible,  dispelled. 

The  specific  nature  of  the  task  which  lies  before  us 
ought  to  be  noted.  Our  previous  discussion  did  not  lead 
us  to  claim  more  than  that  man,  in  the  religious  as  well 
as  the  scientific  sphere,  was  able  to  apprehend  what  was 
real.  He  was  not  shut  out  from  truth  by  any  inherent 
defect  in  the  organ  of  knowledge.  This,  of  course,  could 
not  guarantee  that  what  was  possible  was  always  realised  ; 
and  there  may  be  error  and  illusion  in  religious  matters 
as  well  as  in  secular  things.  What  we  have  done  is  to 
justify  our  position  against  the  assaults  of  agnosticism  and 
scepticism  at  the  outset ;  what  we  have  now  to  do  is  to 
consider  whether  those  specific  ideas  which  are  put  forward 
by  the  religious  spirit,  in  the  belief  that  they  are  essential 
to  its  life,  can  be  shown  to  be  true.  It  is  not  enough  to 
say  that  multitudes  have  believed  in  them  and  their  value 
has  been  proved.  We  cannot  dismiss  the  suggestion  as 
intrinsically  absurd,  that  mankind,  though  not  condemned 
to  illusion,  has  in  point  of  fact  fallen  a  victim  to  continuous 
illusions  in  the  field  of  religion. 

The  demand  for  some  pronouncement  on  the  reality 
to  which  religious  experience  refers  is  a  demand  which 


THE  DATA  AND  THE  PROBLEM        373 

reflective  minds  make  and  cannot  help  making.  The 
sincerely  religious  person  will  not,  indeed,  put  forward 
such  a  demand  on  his  own  behalf :  reasoning  did  not  make 
him  religious,  and  the  inward  assurance  suffices  for  him. 
But  this  subjective  conviction  on  the  part  of  the  individual 
is  not  a  guarantee  for  others ;  and  since  religion  is  essenti- 
ally a  social  phenomenon,  the  need  for  some  rational 
justification  is  felt.  This  want  cannot  be  met  in  the 
fashion  which  finds  favour  in  some  quarters  at  the  present 
day — -by  the  endeavour,  namely,  to  exhibit  the  function 
and  value  of  religion  in  the  individual  and  social  life. 
However  interesting  and  useful  such  an  exposition  may 
be,  it  stops  short  of  the  critical  point:  it  leaves  the 
ontological  question  in  abeyance.  At  the  last  the  reader 
is  left  with  the  unsatisfactory  impression,  that  the  social 
and  personal  value  of  religion  does  not  depend  on  the 
degree  of  truth  contained  in  it,  that  in  religion,  as  in 
science,  there  are  such  things  as  useful  fictions.  Now  in 
the  interests  of  religion  it  is  desirable  that  the  situation 
should  be  cleared  up  by  a  frank  discussion  of  the  problem 
of  truth.  No  doubt  neither  the  religious  individual  nor 
the  religious  society  is  likely  to  take  seriously  the 
possibility  that  its  religious  experience  is  purely  illusory. 
As  in  the  case  of  the  external  world,  so  in  that  of  the 
religious  object,  the  suggestion '  that  it  is  a  fiction  of  the 
experient  subject  is  straightway  rejected  by  most  people. 
But  though  the  mind  recoils  from  a  scepticism  so  sub- 
versive, simply  to  say  that  the  object  of  the  religious 
consciousness  is  real,  does  not  carry  us  very  far.  More 
is  wanted  than  a  mere  affirmation  of  this  sort ;  and  when 
once  the  reflective  spirit  has  been  aroused  and  is  at  work, 
it  inevitably  presses  the  further  query :  What  then  is  the 
object  ?  To  say  in  a  general  way  that  God  is  means  very 
little,  unless  we  know  what  you  mean  by  the  word  God : 
the  term  may  have  the  highest  spiritual  significance  or  it 
may  have  none  at  all.  It  may  signify  the  Universe  as 
a  whole,  or  it  may  denote  a  personal  Being  who  thinks 
and  loves.  In  religious  experience  the  difficulty — a 


374          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY    OF    RELIGION 

difficulty  which  prompts  an  appeal  to  reason  in  the 
interests  of  faith — has  always  been  the  varying  ways  in 
which  the  religious  object  has  been  represented.  At  first 
sight  the  religious  beliefs  of  mankind  resemble  a  dense 
and  pathless  jungle  rather  than  a  field  well  laid  out  and 
harmoniously  ordered.  And  though  '  the  eye  by  long 
use'  comes  to  detect  the  outlines  of  order  in  what  at 
the  outset  seemed  a  hopeless  confusion,  nevertheless  there 
remain  the  gravest  inconsistencies  between  the  different 
conceptions  men  have  formed  of  God.  In  view  of  the 
path  we  have  already  traversed  this  fact  hardly  requires 
comment  or  elucidation.  The  notion  of  God,  we  know, 
has  changed  with  changes  in  culture  and  spiritual  attain- 
ment on  man's  part :  it  develops  with  human  development. 
In  the  face  of  these  facts  we  can  understand  that  the  question, 
Is  there  a  God  ?  has  seldom  thrust  itself  on  human  minds 
in  this  purely  general  form.  When  the  problem  about 
God  arises,  it  commonly  does  so  in  the  form  of  a  doubt 
whether  the  traditional  conception  of  God.  denotes  a  real 
being  or  not.  The  speculative  problem  has  always  its 
point  of  practical  reference ;  and  man  is  impelled  to  think, 
because  he  desires  to  know  whether  he  can  go  on  believing 
in  the  manner  he  has  hitherto  done. 

In  our  present  inquiry  the  first  point  to  be  clear  about 
is  our  attitude  to  what  we  may  call  the  historic  repre- 
sentations of  the  Divine  Being.  The  remarks  in  a  previous 
chapter  about  the  relation  of  a  Philosophy  of  Keligion  to 
a  particular  religion  hold,  of  course,  in  regard  to  the  con- 
ception of  God  in  such  a  religion.  A  religious  philosophy, 
though  in  the  end  it  may  lend  support  to  a  historic  idea 
of  the  Divine  Being,  cannot,  to  begin  with,  select  any 
historic  idea  of  Deity  as  setting  the  special  problem  it 
has  to  solve.  If  such  a  philosophy  is  to  rise  to  the 
height  of  its  argument,  it  must  base  itself  on  religious 
experience  in  its  fulness  and  diversity ;  and  it  must  regard 
the  phenomena  from  the  genetic  or  developmental  stand- 
point. Only  when  we  survey  the  phenomena  of  the 
religious  consciousness  from  the  genetic  point  of  view,  can 


THE  DATA  AND  THE  PROBLEM        375 

we  understand  the  similarities  and  differences  between  the 
various  ideas  of  God,  and  discern  the  lines  of  connexion 
between  them.  What  at  first  sight  seemed  a  radical 
opposition  is  now  revealed  as  the  outcome  of  a  common 
religious  consciousness  which  has  passed  through  different 
stages,  and  has  been  reflected  through  the  media  of  diverse 
levels  of  spiritual  culture.  From  the  stone  fetish  to  the 
Father  of  Spirits  is  a  vast  distance — indeed  they  seem 
wide  as  the  poles  asunder ;  but  they  are  linked  together 
by  the  desires  and  needs  of  the  human  mind  which  work 
at  every  point  of  religious  evolution.  The  forms  of  the 
God-idea,  therefore,  have  a  unity  and  a  connexion  through 
the  active  mind  which  reveals  and  expresses  itself  in  them. 
It  is  not  by  accident  that  the  spirit  of  man,  reacting  on 
stimuli  from  the  environment,  develops  an  idea  of  God 
corresponding  to  its  own  self-development.  If  it  be  true 
that  man  is  'incurably  religious/  it  is  because  there  is 
something  in  him  that  makes  him  so.  "  Man's  nature  is 
so  constituted  that  some  kind  of  consciousness  of  God  • 
is  inevitable  to  him,  although  it  may  be  only  a  presenti-  ,  '* 
ment  or  a  search." 1 

Accordingly  the  development  of  the  idea  of  God  will 
serve  for  a  guide  to  the  speculative  thinker  who  is  seeking 
what  is  central  and  essential  in  the  notion.  There  is  a 
continuity  and  a  logic  in  history  which  show  that  human 
freedom  does  not  mean  caprice,  and  in  the  course  of 
historic  development  ideas  and  values  are  subjected  to  a 
prolonged  test.  The  process  of  development,  we  may 
safely  conclude,  by  which  a  great  conception  is  defined 
and  purified,  formed  and  sustained,  gives  us  a  clue  to 
the  significance  and  value  of  that  idea,  even  though  it 
cannot  be  taken  finally  to  decide  its  truth.  A  conception, 
changing  yet  enduring,  like  the  conception  of  God,  testifies 
to  some  large  self -fulfilment  which  the  human  soul  attains  •*' 
through  it.  A  value  which  persists  and  maintains  itself 
in  the  developing  life  of  mankind,  can  only  do  so  because  it 

1  Pfleiderer's  Gifford  Lectures  on  The  Philosophy  and  Development  of 
Religion,  vol.  i.  p.  196. 


376          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF    RELIGION 

is  in  harmony  with  the  nature  of  man  and  of  the  world 
in  which  his  lot  is  cast.  If  we  look  then  to  the  evolution 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  what  conclusion  do  we  draw 
in  reference  to  the  character  which  it  attributes  to  the 
Object  ?  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  man's  religious  history 
shows  a  gradual,  though  not  by  any  means  a  continual  or 
uninterrupted,  movement  from  the  natural  to  the  spiritual. 
.  The  God  whom  the  developed  culture  of  the  modern  world 
|  requires  must  at  least  be  a  spiritual  and  ethical  Being : 
every  lower  conception  of  Deity  has  in  the  end  failed  to 
satisfy  the  growing  human  spirit.  Man  who  is  an  ethical 
personality  can  only  bow  in  worship  before  a  Being  in 
whom  he  sees  his  ideal  of  goodness  realised,  and  who 
responds  to  what  is  highest  and  best  in  himself.  There 
emerges  then,  as  the  outcome  of  man's  age-long  search 
for  God,  the  vision  of  a  Keality,  ethical,  spiritual,  and 
personal,  in  which  the  religious  needs  of  humanity  are 
fulfilled.  The  sympathetic  student  of  religious  history, 
who  marks  the  tendency  and  the  issues,  will  at  the  least 
assent  to  the  words  of  a  recent  writer :  "  The  dim  and 
broken  image  of  perfection  may  well  be  formed  in  sym- 
pathy and  correspondence  with  a  Perfection  that  is  most 
real."1  The  religious  man  himself  does  not  doubt  that 
this  is  true :  his  whole  spiritual  life  would  become  empty 
and  meaningless  to  him,  if  he  knew  that  his  faith  went 
out  only  to  meet  the  void. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  does  not  the  religious  conscious- 
ness affirm  something  more  about  the  God  whom  it 
postulates  than  that  he  is  an  ethical  and  spiritual  Being  ? 
In  what  sense,  for  example,  does  the  religious  mind 
require  its  God  to  be  personal  ?  Observe  that  we  are  not 
asking  what  answer  theological  thought  has  given  to  this 
problem,  and  expressed  in  the  form  of  doctrinal  proposi- 
tions. We  are  trying  to  find  out  the  conceptions  to  which 
the  data  of  spiritual  experience,  in  its  developed  form, 
point.  When  the  question  is  put  thus,  the  reply,  it  seems 
to  us,  can  hardly  be  doubtful.  The  God  of  spiritual 

1  G.  S.  Stratton,  Psychology  of  the  Religious  Life,  1911,  p.  367. 


THE  DATA  AND  THE  PROBLEM        377 

religion  is  conceived  after  the  analogy  of  the  human; 
personality,  and  is  therefore  capable  of  entering  into' 
personal  relations  with  men:  he  is  near  and  also  far, 
present  to  the  world  and  the  soul,  yet  not  identical  with 
either  and  transcending  both.  Keligious  experience  is* 
based  on  the  existence  of  a  relation  between  the  subject* 
and  the  object,  and  is  incompatible  with  identity ;  even 
genuine  mysticism,  though  it  is  haunted  by  the  thought  of 
the  absorption  of  the  soul  in  God,  still  asserts  a  difference 
between  them.  Pantheism,  though  religions  sometimes; 
pass  into  it,  is  not  a  true  line  of  religious  development ;  * 
and  if  the  pantheist  is  logical,  he  must  judge  the  offices 
of  worship  and  of  prayer  to  be  superfluous  or  altogether 
meaningless.  This  truth  deserves  to  be  insisted  upon,  for 
we  are  sometimes  told  that  only  an  immanent  God,  a  God 
who  has  no  existence  apart  from  the  world  and  the  human 
souls  in  which  he  reveals  himself,  can  satisfy  the  *  highly 
reflective '  modern  mind.  The  validity  of  this  conception 
does  not  fall  to  be  discussed  just  now.  But  the  reader  will 
remember  that  it  is  a  theory  put  forward  by  speculative 
thought,  and  cannot  claim  to  be  the  philosophical  rendering 
of  what  is  normal  and  constant  in  religious  experience. 
Those  who,  for  one  reason  or  another^  hold'  the  theory  to 
be  true,  ought  to  say  it  is  a  rectification,  not  an  inter- 
pretation, of  the  religious  consciousness.  It  will  be  greatly 
to  the  advantage  of  his  work,  if  the  religious  philosopher 
can  regard  the  psychological  facts  and  the  general 
tendency  of  religious  experience  with  a  sympathetic  and 
an  unprejudiced  eye,  seeking  first  and  foremost  to  ^read 
the  meaning  of  his  data.  For  thought  to  be  fruitful  must 
stand  in'  living  relation  to  experience  and  life :  otherwise 
it  is  likely  to  waste  its  energy  in  barren  speculations.  A 
Philosophy  of  Eeligion  which  is  dominated  by  an  interest 
exclusively  speculative,  and  pays  no  heed  to  the  actual 
movement  of  the  religious  spirit,  may  indeed  offer  to  us  a 
metaphysical  substitute  for  the  idea  of  God.  But  the 
justification  of  a  substitute  lies  in  its  ability  to  perform 
the  function  of  that  for  which  it  is  substituted.  And  it  is 


378          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF    RELIGION 

certain  that  neither  an  Infinite  Substance  nor  an  Absolute 
Idea,  even  when  persuasively  commended  by  philosophy 
as  the  truth  of  the  popular  notion  of  Deity,  could  fulfil  the 
spiritual  office  of  God,  or  serve  to  explain  and  evaluate 
the  data  of  religious  experience.  Nevertheless,  it  would 
be  a  mistake  to  conclude  that  the  duty  of  a  speculative 
theory  of  religion  is  merely  to  interpret  faithfully,  and 
draw  inferences  strictly  from  the  facts  of  personal  and 
racial  religious  experience.  Though  philosophy  must  not 
ignore  any  side  of  experience,  its  office  is  critical  as  well 
as  interpretative.  And  there  will  be  room  for  criticism  in 
religion,  for  the  religious  point  of  view  is  incomplete. 
The  religious  mind  occupies  itself  with  a  certain  aspect  of 
experience,  passing  over  other  aspects,  while  philosophy 
seeks  to  embrace  experience  in  all  its  fulness.  Hence 
postulates  made  from  a  partial  point  of  view  may  require 
to  be  modified  or  supplemented  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  whole. 

At  the  present  time  there  are  special  grounds  why  those 
who  are  sincerely  interested  in  religion  should  not  shrink 
from  facing  the  problem  raised  by  its  data.  The  spirit 
of  positivism  and  agnosticism,  though  it  may  not  assume 
the  form  of  a  deliberate  philosophical  theory,  is  an  in- 
fluential element  in  current  thinking ;  and  the  idea  is 
common  that  religion  is  very  much  a  matter  of  emotion 
and  sentiment,  and  cannot  stand  the  test  of  rational 
criticism.  Religions,  it  is  said,  are  one  and  all  the  product 
of  a  pre-scieutific  age ;  they  figure  as  survivals  in  the 
environment  of  modern  culture,  and  as  such  they  are 
doomed  to  dwindle  and  die.  To  use  the  sarcastic  words 
of  Schopenhauer :  "  Religions  are  like  glowworms,  they 
need  the  dark  in  order  to  shine."  It  is  a  fair  inference 
that  those  who  adopt  this  attitude  believe  that  the  more 
strenuously  we  apply  rational  reflexion  to  the  content  of 
religion,  the  less  likely  are  we  to  endorse  its  claims.  In 
which  case  the  best  advice  a  religious  philosopher  could 
give  to  those  who  love  their  religion,  and  desire  to  hold 
to  it,  would  be :  "  Feel  warmly  towards  it  and  act  vigor- 


THE  DATA  AND  THE  PROBLEM        379 

ously  on  its  behalf,  but  think  about  it  as  little  as  possible  !  " 
Even  the  plain  man  will  realise  that  there  is  something 
dubious  in  this  recommendation ;  and  it  is  a  questionable 
service  to  any  religion  to  preach  the  doctrine,  that  its 
sole  justification  lies  in  its  practical  value.  For  the 
argument  lies  to  hand,  that  utility  and  expediency  are  a 
sufficient  defence  of  any  idea  or  institution.  But  though 
rational  reflexion  fail  to  support  the  claims  of  the  religious 
consciousness  with  logical  proof,  the  exercise  of  reason  is 
still  needed  to  show  us  why  such  an  attempt  at  proof  fails. 
Moreover,  though  reason  comes  short  of  giving  anything 
like  demonstration  in  this  field,  its  work  may  still  be  of 
conspicuous  value  in  the  interests  of  religious  faith.  I  do 
not  mean  merely  that  it  may  conduct  a  psychological  and 
an  epistemological  inquiry  into  the  working  of  the  religious 
mind.  That  is  useful,  but  it  is  not  enough.  If  you  do 
not  go  beyond  such  an  inquiry,  you  leave  the  whole 
question  of  ultimate  truth  unsettled :  philosophy  is  dumb 
on  the  final  issue,  and  the  individual  can  decide  for  himself 
in  response  to  the  appeal  of  the  feelings  or  by  a  '  venture 
of  faith.'  The  real  danger  is  that  a  religion  which  ignores 
the  claims  of  reason,  and  moves  without  its  guiding  light, 
is  apt  to  fall  into  fanaticism  and  superstition,  or  to  drift 
into  obscurantism.  Surely  the  more  excellent  way  is  to 
exercise  our  reason  on  the  content  of  our  religion,  and  to 
follow  its  leading  so  far  as  we  legitimately  can ;  only  thus 
can  we  hope  to  bring  religion  into  vital  relations  with 
science  and  philosophy.  It  is,  indeed,  well  not  to  expect 
too  much  from  speculative  thought,  and  there  are  those 
who  like  to  remind  us  that  '  our  little  systems  have  their 
day/  But  if  philosophical  reflexion  even  made  it  clear 
that  the  postulates  of  the  religious  consciousness  are  not 
antagonistic  to  those  of  science  and  speculative  thought, 
it  woulcThave  performed  a  service  whose  value  could  not 
be  gainsaid. 

The  data  of  religion,  by  their  variety  and  by  their 
divergences,  press  upon  us  the  problem  of  the  ultimate 
truth  of  religious  experience.  And  it  is  natural  to  ask 


380          A    SPECULATIVE   THEORY    OF    RELIGION 

how  the  study  of  the  data  may  help  us  to  answer  this 
question.  Plainly  the  facts,  to  be  of  service,  must  be 
regarded  as  a  connected  whole:  they  must  be  seen  in 
relation  to  the  general  development  of  religion,  and  be 
interpreted  in  connexion  with  it.  In  particular,  the  facts 
of  religious  evolution  have  to  be  used  to  bring  out,  if 
possible,  the  idea  of  God  towards  which  the  religious  spirit 
seems  to  strive,  and  in  which  it  finds  the  fullest  satisfaction. 
Now  it  is  true  the  study  of  religious  development  will 
not  enable  us  to  define  accurately  a  conception  of  God, 
which  completely  and  universally  satisfies  the  religious 
mind.  The  tendencies  at  work  are  too  diverse  for  this. 
What  we  do  find,  is  a  movement  through  imperfect  and 
unsatisfying  conceptions  to  conceptions  more  perfect  and 
satisfying ;  and  so  long  as  religion  develops,  we  shall  not 
be  able  to  say  it  presents  to  us  an  idea  of  God  absolutely 
final.  Nevertheless  a  study  such  as  we  have  been  con- 
sidering does  show  that  the  line  of  development  in  religion 
is  in  the  direction  of  a  personal  and  ethical  God,  a  God 
who  enters  into  personal  communion  and  sustains  ethical 
relations  with  men.  This  is  without  doubt  the  conception 
of  Deity  which  best  maintains  itself  in  the  evolution  of 
religion,  and  is  most  fruitful  in  its  working.  To  investigate 
the  truth  of  this  idea  is  therefore  a  problem  which  is 
set  to  the  religious  philosopher  by  the  facts  of  religious 
experience. 

I  do  not  think  we  are  entitled  to  say  more,  than  that 
man's  spiritual  experience  shows  us  the  idea  of  God  which 
on  the  whole  prevails,  and  in  the  long  run  works  best. 
The  notion  that  the  evolution  of  religion  is  itself  a  logical 
movement,  a  movement  which  is  a  continuous,  progressive, 
and  certain  definition  of  what  God  is,  will  not  stand 
criticism.  The  facts  are  far  too  complicated  to  fall  into 
this  clear-cut  scheme,  and  historic  development  does  not 
answer  the  questions  it  raises  in  such  a  convincing  fashion. 

The  demands  of  the  religious  spirit,  as  they  have 
worked  themselves  out  in  the  historic  process,  have  yielded 
the  notion  of  an  ethical  and  personal  God.  Is  the  nature 


THE   THEISTIC    PROOFS  381 

of  reality  such  that  this  conception  of  God  can  be  justified  ? 
This  is  the  great  and  enduring  problem  of  a  Philosophy 
of  Eeligion.  In  proceeding  to  treat  of  this  subject  I  shall 
begin  by  examining  certain  historic  attempts  which  have 
been  made  to  give  rational  proof  of  the  existence  of  God. 

B. — PROOFS  OF  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  GOD. 

The  importance  of  the  traditional  proofs  of  the 
existence  of  God  has  greatly  diminished  in  modern  times. 
No  one,  remarks  the  late  Prof.  Pfleiderer,  now  holds  it 
possible  to  prove  the  divine  existence  from  an  abstract 
conception  of  God,  or,  from  an  abstract  conception  of  the 
world,  to  reach  by  inference  a  God  who  is  separate  from 
the  world.1  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  these  proofs  have 
ever  played  a  part  in  producing  religious  conviction  where 
it  did  not  already  exist ;  their  ostensible  function  has 
rather  been  to  confirm  religious  belief  than  to  create  it. 
The  proofs  themselves  do  not  set  out  from  religious  pre- 
suppositions, either  explicit  or  implicit.  The  presuppositions 
from  which  they  start  are  quite  general  and  abstract ; 
and  the  standing  difficulty  in  the  argument  has  always 
been,  that  the  concrete  reality  at  which  they  aim  contains 
more  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  premisses.  Those  who 
developed  the  Theistic  Arguments  had  a  clear  idea  of 
what  they  wanted  to  reach,  and  they  hoped  to  reach  it 
by  logical  thinking.  The  misfortune  was  that  they  were 
not  fully  conscious  of  the  disparity  between  the  means 
and  the  end.  The  '  proofs '  have  been  a  favourite  theme 
of  comment  and  criticism ;  in  truth,  the  subject  has  been 
treated  so  often  by  theologians  and  philosophers  that  it 
has  been  worn  threadbare,  and  it  has  become  well-nigh 
impossible  to  say  anything  new  on  the  topic.  There  is 
a  consensus  of  opinion  that  the  arguments  are  not  valid 
in  their  present  form ;  but  some  who  admit  this  believe 
that  they  can  be  reconstructed  so  as  to  have  weight, 
though  the  weight  does  not  amount  to  demonstration.  It 
1  Op.  tit.,  vol.  i.  p.  137. 


382          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY    OF   RELIGION 

will  be  necessary  to  refer  to  these  reconstructions,  and  the 
whole  subject,  however  familiar,  can  hardly  be  passed  over 
here :  for  it  is  of  historic  interest,  and  shows  the  way  in 
which  thought  has  come  to  the  aid  of  faith  by  offering 
rational  proof  that  the  object  of  faith  is  real.  The  proofs 
represent  modes  in  which  the  human  mind,  through  the 
exercise  of  reasoning  meant  to  be  universal  and  cogent, 
sought  to  justify  to  itself  the  truth  of  its  religious  con- 
viction. A  short  discussion  and  criticism  of  these  proofs 
will  help  to  define  more  clearly  in  our  minds  the  nature 
of  the  problem  before  us.  And  when  we  understand  where 
certain  solutions  have  failed,  and  why  they  failed,  we  shall 
see  better  the  lines  on  which  a  solution  may  be  profitably 
attempted. 

The  proof  which  is  usually  taken  first  is  theVOntolpgical; 
It  is  the  one  which  raises  the  deepest  philosophical  issues, 
and,  as  we  shall  see,  the  other  proofs  implicitly  assume 
its  validity.  The  Ontological  Argument  has  been  stated 
in  slightly  different  ways,  but  its  essential  contention  is, 
that  the  reality  of  God  is  involved  in  the  idea  of  God. 
There  is  something,  it  is  urged,  unique  in  the  idea  of  God, 
so  that  it  cannot  be  a  mere  idea.  Anselm  (1033— 11 09)  pre- 
sented this  proof  in  its  scholastic  form.  It  runs  thus  :  God 
is  a  Being  than  which  a  greater  cannot  be  conceived  (id 
quo  majus  cogitari  nequit) ;  but  an  idea  which  existed  only 
in  intellectu  would  not  be  so  great  as  one  which  existed 
in  re  as  well  as  in  intellectu ;  therefore  God  must  be 
thought  as  necessarily  existing.  This  argument  has  been 
set  forth  in  a  simpler  and  less  artificial  form  by  Descartes. 
He  omits  the  step  which  declares  that  what  exists  in 
fact  as  well  as  in  idea  is  greater  than  what  exists  merely 
in  idea,  and  affirms  that  the  very  notion  of  God,  the  most 
perfect  Being,  carries  existence  as  necessarily  with  it  as 
the  idea  of  a  triangle  carries  with  it  the  equality  of  the 
sum  of  its  angles  to  two  right  angles.  In  short,  reality 
belongs,  and  is  clearly  perceived  to  belong,  to  the  very 
notion  of  God.  Descartes  is  well  aware  that  this  line 
of  reasoning  will  not  hold  in  regard  to  other  objects  of 


THE   THEISTIC   PROOFS  383 

thought,  but  he  maintains  the  idea  of  God  to  be  unique 
in  the  respect  that  it  involves  existence.  This  specific 
claim  is  the  crux  of  the  argument.  A  second  form  of 
proof  was  offered  by  Descartes.  In  this  case  the  argument 
asserts  that  the  idea  of  God,  who  is  infinite  and  perfect, 
cannot  be  formed  in  man  by  any  finite  object,  and  must 
be  caused  by  God  himself.  It  is  implied  here  that  the 
idea  of  the  Infinite  is  positive  and  cannot  be  reached  via 
negationis.  But,  even  if  this  were  not  open  to  objection, 
the  term  Infinite  connotes  much  less  than  is  signified  by 
God.  Still,  taken  simply  as  a  probable  argument,  the 
thought  is  suggestive  and  not  without  weight,  that  man's 
knowledge  of  God  is  due  to  God  himself.  He  is  the 
sufficient  reason  of  the  idea  of  himself  in  man. 

The  reader  may  have  already  begun  to  suspect  that 
the  force  of  these  attempted  proofs  depends  a  good  deal 
on  what  you  mean  by  God.  And  this  receives  a  rather 
striking  confirmation  in  the  case  of  the  thinker  who  comes 
after  Descartes  in  the  philosophical  succession — Spinoza. 
Spinoza,  like  Descartes,  infers  from  the  idea  of  God,  as 
the  source  and  sum  of  all  perfection,  his  existence.  But 
for  Spinoza,  God,  or  Substance,  is  the  infinite  and  all- 
inclusive  Whole,  within  which  fall  the  parallel  differentia- 
tions of  thought  and  extension  as  its  corresponding  aspects. 
On  this  construction  of  the  term  God  his  reality  is  inevi- 
tably involved  in  his  idea.  But  there  is  here  no  transition 
from  the  essence  as  idea  to  the  reality,  for  the  one  is 
bound  up  with  the  other.  In  fact,  if  God  is  defined  in 
a  purely  pantheistic  way,  the  very  notion  of  a  proof  of 
his  existence  becomes  not  only  superfluous  but  absurd. 
To  say  the  essence  of  God  involves  his  existence  is  quite 
true,  if  we  grant  Spinoza's  presuppositions ;  but  these  in 
effect  prejudge  the  whole  question.  So  far  as  Spinoza  is 
concerned  the  important  point  is  not  his  proof  of  the 
existence  of  God,  for  this  is  purely  verbal,  but  the  validity 
of  the  philosophical  conceptions  on  which  his  system  is 
based.  The  same  dependence  on  a  philosophical  system 
is  seen  in  the  theistic  proof  of  Leibniz.  This  proof  might 


384          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY    OF    RELIGION 

perhaps  more  fitly  be  taken  to  illustrate  a  phase  of  the 
Cosmological  Argument,  but  since  it  has  interesting  points 
of  contact  and  contrast  with  Spinoza's  proof,  I  shall  briefly 
refer  to  it  here.  Leibniz's  argument  proceeds  on  a  dis- 
tinction which  he  draws  in  his  philosophy  between  the 
possible  and  the  actual,  the  essence  and  the  existence. 
With  Spinoza,  on  the  other  hand,  all  that  is  possible  is 
actual.  Leibniz  argues :  "  If  there  is  a  reality  in  essences 
or  possibilities,  or  rather  in  eternal  truths,  this  reality 
must  needs  be  founded  in  something  existing  and  actual, 
and  consequently  in  the  existence  of  the  necessary  Being 
in  whom  essence  involves  existence,  or  in  whom  to  be 
possible  is  to  be  actual" 1  Leibniz  means  by  essences, 
possibilities  or  tendencies  to  exist,  and  these  in  turn  he 
identifies  with  eternal  truths.  The  gist  of  the  argument 
is,  that  these  possibilities  must  have  their  ground  in  some- 
thing actual,  in  the  existence  of  a  Necessary  Being.  In 
the  case  of  a  perfect  Being  what  is  possible  is  actual,  for 
there  can  be  nothing  to  hinder  the  tendency  to  exist.  In 
this  instance  also  the  cogency  of  the  argument  depends  on 
the  postulates  of  a  metaphysical  system,  and  the  notion 
of  possibility  implied  in  the  system.  But  it  is  manifest 
the  line  of  proof  which  Leibniz  endeavours  to  work  out 
could  not  give,  for  its  conclusion,  a  Necessary  Being 
who  is  separate  from  the  world  in  which  possibilities  are 
realised. 

At  the  hands  of  Kant  the  Ontological  Proof  was 
subjected  to  a  penetrating  criticism,  and  since  Kant's  day 
it  has  ceased  to  be  put  forward  seriously  in  the  old  form. 
His  criticism  proceeds  on  the  principle  that  existence  is 
no  part  of  the  content  of  an  idea.  "  Being  is  evidently 
not  a  real  predicate,  that  is,  a  conception  of  something 
that  is  capable  of  being  added  to  the  conception  of  a  thing. 
...  I  add  nothing  to  my  conception,  which  expresses 
merely  the  possibility  of  the  object,  by  simply  placing  its 
object  before  me  in  thought,  and  saying  that  it  is.  The 
real  contains  no  more  than  the  possible.  A  hundred  real 

1  Monadoloyy,  sec.  44,  Latta's  translation. 


THE   THEISTIC    PROOFS  385 

dollars  do  not  contain  a  cent  more  than  a  hundred  possible 
dollars."1  Kant  has  shown  conclusively,  that  it  is  not 
possible  from  the  analysis  of  a  conception  to  deduce  from  it 
existence  as  a  predicate.  Even  when  we  feel  that  existence 
does  belong  to  an  idea  or  combination  of  ideas,  we  are  not 
entitled  to  say  that  the  union  of  existence  and  idea  is  more 
than  a  union  in  idea.  It  has,  however,  been  objected  that, 
while  Kant's  reasoning  may  hold  of  the  idea  of  a  particular 
thing, — say  a  sum  of  money — the  idea  of  God  as  the 
absolute  Being  is  in  a  different  position.  On  this  ground 
Hegel  tried  to  rehabilitate  the  Ontological  Proof.  In  the 
Hegelian  terminology,  the  being  of  a  finite  object  in  space 
and  time  is  discrepant  from  its  notion.  "  God,  on  the 
contrary,  expressly  has  to  be  what  can  only  be  '  thought 
as  existing ' ;  His  notion  involves  being."  "  Certainly  it 
would  be  strange  if  the  notion,  the  very  inmost  of  mind, 
if  even  the  '  Ego,'  or  above  all,  the  concrete  totality  we 
call  God,  were  not  rich  enough  to  include  so  poor  a 
category  as  being,  the  very  poorest  and  most  abstract  of 
all."2  With  Hegel,  as  with  Spinoza,  if  we  grant  the 
principles  of  his  system,  if  we  agree  that  the  term  God 
means  what  he  meant  by  it,  then  the  notion  of  God 
involves  his  being.  For  with  Hegel  being  does  not  lie 
beyond  thought :  it  is  its  initial  and  simplest  determination 
as  it  moves  dialectically  forward  to  fully  articulated  self- 
consciousness.  On  this  theory  reality  does  not  stand  over 
against  thought,  but  is  immanent  in  it.  To  say,  however, 
that  all  being  falls  within  the  development  of  mind  is  a 
highly  disputable  proposition,  and  Hegel's  reconstruction 
of  the  Ontological  Argument  shares  to  the  full  the  weak- 
ness of  this  initial  assumption.  But  even  were  Hegel's 
principle  sound,  it  is  obvious  his  line  of  thought  could  not 
lead  to  a  God  who  transcended  the  world,  and  had  a  being 
for  himself  apart  from  the  world  and  the  self-conscious 

1  Transcendental  Dialectic,  Prof.  Watson's  translation,  pp.  208-209. 

8  Logic  of  Hegel,  Wallace's  tr.,  2nd  ed.,  pp.  108-109.  The  validity  of 
the  Theistic  Proofs  was  a  subject  in  which  Hegel  was  interested,  and  he  has 
written  at  some  length  on  them  in  the  Appendix  to  his  Phil,  der  Religion. 

25 


386          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF    RELIGION 

spirits  in   which    he    realises    himself.     And    the    higher 
religious  consciousness  demands  this. 

It  is  sometimes  said  in  reply  to  this  criticism,  that,  if 
what  we  are  obliged  to  think  is  not  necessarily  real,  there 
is  an  end  to  all  proof  and  reasoning.  And  this  considera- 
tion has  weighed  with  some  thinkers,  who,  in  consequence, 
find  themselves  unable  to  accept  Kant's  condemnation  of 
the  Ontological  Argument.1  Beyond  doubt,  if  thought 
cannot  be  valid  of  a  reality  beyond  the  thinker,  we  are 
plunged  into  a  hopeless  scepticism.  If  we  set  out  from 
real  premisses  and  think  out  their  implications  logically, 
then  our  conclusions  will  hold  good  of  reality.  But  this 
is  far  from  proving  that  the  conception  of  God  as  a  Being 
with  a  determinate  character — a  conception  not  reached 
by  strict  inference  from  data  of  experience — implies  his 
existence.  There  is  a  sense,  however,  in  which  a  grain  of 
truth  is  contained  in  the  Ontological  Proof,  though  the 
argument  neither  is  nor  can  be  made  a  proof  of  God  in 
the  religious  meaning  of  the  term.  If  for  God  we  sub- 
stitute the  technical  phrase  Ens  Eealissimum,  or  a  Being 
who  is  the  sum  of  all  reality,  then  it  is  difficult  to  suppose 
that  such  a  conception  is  a  mere  idea  in  the  mind.  For 
thought  has  reference  to  being,  and  would  be  meaningless 
without  it:  were  there  no  being  there  would  be  no 
thinking.  And  if  so,  there  seems  to  be  no  sense  in  saying 
there  is  not  a  sum  of  reality  or  a  most  real  Being.  There 
is  nothing  contradictory  in  such  a  notion,  and  there  is  no 
relevant  ground  for  denying  its  truth.  But  it  is  evident 

1  So  A.  Dorner,  Religionsphiloso/>hie,  p.  202.  Cp.  also  Webb,  Problems 
in  the  Relations  of  God  and  Man,  1911,  p.  186.  Mr.  Webb  thinks  Kant  has 
not  finally  discredited  the  Ontological  Proof,  "if  we  understand  it  not  as 
having  to  do  with  a  particular  case  in  which  we  are  compelled  to  believe  in 
the  reality  of  the  object  of  a  conception,  but  as  the  assertion  that  the  ex- 
istence of  knowledge  implies  an  ultimate  union  of  thought  with  reality." 
The  writer,  it  may  be  noted,  does  not  say  "ultimate  identity."  The  late 
Prof.  Pfleiderer  endeavoured  to  reconstruct  the  Ontological  Argument  by 
postulating  God  as  the  ground  of  the  co-ordination  and  correspondence  of 
thought  and  reality.  But  even  though  we  accepted  the  fact  of  such  a 
'correspondence,'  the  theistic  inference  is  not  necessary.  E.  von  Hartmann 
argues  from  the  same  premisses  to  a  very  different  conclusion. 


THE   THEISTIC   PROOFS  387 

when  the  Ontological  Argument  is  thus  reduced  to  the 
form  in  which  it  begins  to  be  valid,  it  has  become  quite 
useless  for  any  religious  purpose.  Whenever  we  begin  to 
qualify  the  concept  of  being  with  the  attributes  which  .' 
pertain  to  Deity,  we  cease  to  have  logical  warrant  that  our .' 
connexions  in  idea  are  also  connexions  in  fact.  The  transi-  • 
tion  from  God  in  idea  to  God  in  reality  cannot  be  made 
in  this  way.  The  source  of  the  vitality  of  the  Ontological 
Argument — of  the  lingering  belief  that,  after  all,  there  is 
something  in  it — must  be  sought  elsewhere  than  in  the 
cogency  of  its  logic.  It  lies,  as  Lotze  has  pointed  out,  in 
the  rooted  disinclination  of  the  human  spirit  to  believe 
that  the  Supreme  Being,  who  is  the  Supreme  Value,  is 
only  a  fiction  of  the  mind.1  The  refusal  to  entertain  the 
thought  is  not  due  to  convincing  argument,  but  to  the 
demands  of  inner  experience.  The  Ontological  Proof,  in 
its  traditional  form,  represents  an  artificial  way  in  which 
men  sought  to  justify  to  themselves  a  faith,  Nof  the  truth 
of  which  they  felt  sure  on  other  grounds. 

In  its  method  the  second  of  the  Theistic  Proofs,  the 
Cosmological,  is  sounder  than  the  Ontological.  It  sets  out 
from  the  world  as  given,  and  from  the  character  of  the 
world  infers  the  existence  of  a  God  to  explain  it.y  This 
line  of  thought  was  at  least  suggested  by  Plato  in  the 
TimceuSy  where  he  says  that  every  created  thing  must  be 
created  by  some  cause.2  It  is  also  hinted  at  by  Augustine  : 
"And  I  beheld  the  other  things  below  Thee,  and  I  per- 
ceived that  they  neither  are  absolutely  existent  nor  ab- 
solutely non-existent.  For  they  are,  since  they  are  from 
Thee,  but  are  not,  because  they  are  not  what  Thou  art. 
For  that  truly  is  which  remains  unchangeably."8  The 
Cosmological  Proof  has  two  forms.  In  the  first  instance 
we  set  out  from  the  contingency  of  facts  within  the  world : 
they  may  either  be  or  not  be — so  it  is  said,  and  there  is  no 
element  of  necessity  in  them.  This  contingency,  however, 

1  Microcosmus,  Eng.  tr.,  vol.  ii.  p.  671.     Cp.  also  fieligionsphilosophie, 
pp.  9-10. 

2  Tim.  p.  27  ff.  a  Confessions,  Bk.  vii.  cap.  xi. 


388          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

must  lead  up  to  something  which  is  necessary,  and  we 
have  to  posit  a  necessary  Being  as  the  ground  of  the 
contingent.  .  The  other  form  of  proof  makes  use  of  the 
principle  of  causality.  In  our  experienced  world  effects 
are  always  preceded  by  causes,  and  these  in  turn  are  the 
effects  of  other  causes.  So  the  chain  of  causality  runs 
back  step  by  step.  But  an  infinite  line  of  causes  is  im- 
possible, and  there  must  come  a  point  in  the  series  at 
which  we  arrive  at  a  First  or  Uncaused  Cause.  .This  First 
Cause  of  all  the  different  series  of  causes  is  God. 

Kant  was  no  doubt  right  when  he  said  that  this  proof 
could  not  yield  a  necessary  Being  over  and  above  the  given 
series  of  facts.  Moreover,  we  are  not  justified  in  assuming, 
without  evidence,  that  data  within  our  world  are  contin- 
gent ;  and  even  if  this  were  so,  it  would  not  follow  that 
the  world  itself  in  its  totality  is  contingent.  Again,  it 
may  be  asked/Why  is  the  Unconditioned  Being  said  to  be 
necessary  ?  The  necessary,  in  the  current  use  of  the  word, 
is  that  which  is  conditioned,  in  other  words  determined  to 
be  what  it  is  and  not  something  else;  and  this  idea  of 
necessity  should  not  be  predicated  uncritically  of  the 
Unconditioned.  Nor  is  it  apparent  how  a  world  of  con- 
tingent facts  could  be  derived  from  a  necessary  Being. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  we  think  the  line  of  regress  under 
the  notion  of  effects  and  causes^lihere  are  just  as  good 
reasons  for  saying  the  series  can  be  prolonged  indefinitely 
as  that  it  must  end  in  a  First  Cause.  Then  the  causal 
series  in  the  world  are  manifold,  and  it  is  not  legitimate 
to  assume  that  all  the  lines  converge  upon  and  end  in  a 
single  Cause/  Why  not  a  plurality  of  First  Causes  ? 
Finally,  there  is  the  objection  that  the  notion  of  cause  is  a 
category  by  which  we  connect  and  organise  elements  within 
experience,  and  ought  not  to  be  applied  without  some 
reason  and  explanation  to  a  Being  supposed  to  exist 
beyond  the  experienced  world.  The  truth  is  that,  while 
the  principle  is  sound  that  we  should  argue  from  the  facts 
of  experience  to  a  ground- of  experience,  the  Cosmological 
Proof  gives  effect  to  this  principle  in  a  faulty  and  one- 


THE  THEISTIC   PROOFS  389 

sided  way.  It  tries  to  reach  a  certain  goal  by  setting  out 
from  data  and  using  a  method  which  preclude  it  from 
reaching  the  goal.  This  line  of  proof,  even  were  it  purified 
of  flaws,  could  not  take  us  beyond  the  world-system  ;  it 
...  .  could  not  lead  us  to  God  in  the  theistic  sense  of  the  word. 
Jji  --  The  third  of  the  traditional  proofs,  the  Teleological,  is 
rather  an  extension,  or  a  special  application,  of  the  Cosmo- 
logical  than  a  separate  argument.  Like  the  latter,  it  infers 
that  a  particular  aspect  or  character  of  the  world  requires 
the  existence  of  God  to  explain  it.  The  Teleological  Proof 
bases  itself  on  the  presence  of  order  in  the  world;  this 
order  it  takes  to  be  the  token  of  design,  and  concludes 
that  God  must  be  the  source  of  that  design.  Of  all  the 
Proofs  this,  to  the  ordinary  mind,  is  the  most  simple  and 
striking.  The  existence  of  design  in  nature  at  first  blush 
seems  so  transparent,  and  the  need  for  applying  the  human 
analogy  of  the  designer  and  his  material  so  obvious.  The 
Teleological  Argument  is  consequently  an  old  one  ;  and 
Plato  has  in  substance  made  use  of  it  when  he  suggested 
that  the  principle  that  mind  orders  all  things  was  the  only 
one  worthy  of  the  world  around  us  and  the  heavens  above 
us.1  The  natural  tendency  of  thought  in  this  matter  is 
fairly  reflected  by  the  words  of  Bacon  :  "  For  jwhile  the 
mind  of  man  looketh  upon  second  causes  scattered,  it  may 
sometimes  rest  upon  them  and  go  no  farther  ;  but  when  it 
beholdeth  the  chain  of  them  confederate  and  linked 
together,  it  must  needs  fly  to  Providence  and  Deity."2 
And  Kant,  it  is  well  known,  treated  the  Teleological  Proof 
more  tenderly  than  the  others,  and  said  that  "  it  must  be 
always  mentioned  with  respect."  But  he  very  pertinently 
remarked  :  "  All  that  the  argument  from  design  can  possibly 
prove  is  an  architect  of  the  world,  who  is  very  much  limited 
by  the  adaptability  of  the  material  in  which  he  works." 
On  the  evidence  it  is  inadmissible  to  say  that  such  a 
Being  is  supreme,  omnipotent,  and  the  creator  of  the  world. 


1  Philebus,  p.  28  E  :  rb  dt  vovv  ir&vra  SiaKOffpeiv  atfrck,  <f>Avai  Kai  7775  8\f/eus 
Kfo/Jiov  Kal  i]\Lov  Kal  cre\rivri$  Kal  avrtpuv  Kal  Trdfftjs  rfjs  irepi0opas  &j-iov. 

2  Vid.  his  essay  on  Atheism. 


390          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF    RELIGION 

The  human  designer  is  hampered  by  an  intractable  element 
in  the  matter  which  he  manipulates,  and  the  way  in  which 
he  overcomes  this  intractability  is  a  token  of  his  intelli- 
gence and  foresight.  It  is  obvious  that  this  conception 
cannot  be  consistently  applied  to  a  Being  supposed  to  be 
omnipotent,  who  cannot  therefore  be  limited  by  his  material 
in  the  way  that  man  is.  Moreover,  while  it  may  well  be 
that  so-called  matter  is  incapable  of  producing  order  and 
adaptation,  those  who  argue  from  design  ought  not  to  take 
this  for  granted.  The  physico-theological  proof,  as  it  is 
sometimes  called,  fails  owing  to  the  mechanical  and  external 
way  in  which  it  deals  with  order  and  adaptation  in  nature, 
and  it  has  lost  much  of  its  former  force  owing  to  the 
growth  and  influence  of  the  idea  of  evolution  in  modern 
times.  I  have  already  referred  to  the  transformation  of 
teleological  ideas  by  the  modern  principle  of  development 
in  the  previous  chapter,  and  I  need  not  repeat  here  what 
was  said  there.  The  result  has  been  that  the  notion  of 
external  design  has  been  replaced  by  that  of  immanent 
adaptation,  and  the  complex  harmony  of  parts  in  organisms 
is  regarded  as  a  continuous  development  from  simpler 
forms.  It  may  be  well  to  repeat  that  the  presence  of 
immanent  ends  in  the  world  does  not  prove  the  existence 
of  an  intelligence  which  is  above  or  apart  from  the  world- 
system.  We  have  already  tried  to  show  that  this  inward 
finalism  is  consistent  with  theism,  but  it  certainly  does  not 
point  to  a  theistic  conception  of  the  universe  as  its  only 
possible  explanation. 

As  Kant  explained,  the  three  Theistic  Proofs  are  in- 
timately related  to  one  another.  The  teleological  proof 
leans  back  on  the  cosmological,  and  the  cosmological  in 
turn  leans  back  on  the  ontological.  If  we  follow  the 
natural  progress  of  the  human  mind  in  its  endeavour  to 
rise  by  reflexion  to  the  idea  of  God,  we  have  to  reverse  the 
order  in  which  we  have  taken  the  proofs.  The  evidences  of 
design,  which  he  seemed  to  find  in  the  world  around  him, 
led  man  in  the  first  instance  to  think  of  a  designer,  and 
this  designer  he  identified  with  God.  Further  reflexion 


THE   THEISTIC   PROOFS  391 

served  to  show  that  the  argument  must  be  extended  to 
embrace  the  world  as  a  whole,  and  the  world,  it  was 
inferred,  must  have  a  First  Cause  who  was  God.  But  it 
is  plain  that  both  these  arguments  imply  the  principle 
which  is  stated  explicitly  in  the  Ontological  Argument. 
They  presuppose  the  principle  that  what  we  find  ourselves 
obliged  to  think  holds  of  reality ;  and  this  is  the  nerve  of 
the  Ontological  Proof.  In  short,  all  the  arguments  involve 
the  validity  and  trustworthiness  of  thought.  We  have 
already  indicated  in  what  sense,  and  with  what  qualifica- 
tions this  far-reaching  principle  is  to  be  understood ;  and 
in  any  case,  whatever  stress  is  laid  on  this  principle,  the 
premisses  of  the  traditional  proofs  are  not  such  that  they 
could  yield  the  existence  of  God  for  their  logical  con- 
clusion. 

Two  further  arguments  fall  to  be  mentioned — the 
Moral  Proof  and  the  Historical  Proof.  Though  it  is 
usual  to  speak  of  them  as  proofs,  they  are  not  proofs  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word,  and  they  do  not  claim  to  be  so. 
The  first  of  these,  the  Moral  Argument,  seeks  to  show  that 
in  the  existence  of  God  we  find  the  best  solution  to  the 
problems  of  the  moral  life.  The  form  which  this  argument 
received  at  the  hands  of  Kant  is  peculiar,  and  it  is  not 
satisfactory.  Kant  says  it  is  a  demand  of  the  moral  selfi 
that  the  highest  Good  be  realised.  But  in  the  highest! 
Good  there  are  two  elements,  virtue  and  happiness:  thel 
consciousness  of  duty  fulfilled  and  of  desire  satisfied.' 
Now,  for  Kant,  virtue  and  happiness  belong  to  two 
different  worlds,  the  former  to  the  intelligible  and  the 
latter  to  the  phenomenal  world.  How  can  the  union  of 
these  diverse  elements  demanded  by  the  Supreme  Good  be 
assured  ?  Kant  replies  by  the  postulate  of  God  as  the 
teleological  ground  of  both  worlds :  God  then  guarantees 
the  union  of  virtue  and  happiness,  and  therefore  the 
realisation  of  the  Chief  Good.  All  this  is  very  artificial. 
It  is  not  a  psychological  description  of  the  motives  which 
lead  men  to  postulate  a  God ;  nor  is  it  consistent  with 
Kant's  own  premisses  that  an  empirical  and  sensuous 


392          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

product,  which  he  deems  happiness  to  be,  should  be  raised 
to  a  constituent  of  the  Supreme  Good.  Yet  if  we 
disentangle  Kant's  argument  from  the  adventitious 
elements  which  hamper  it,  we  can  present  it  in  a  form 
which  is  not  without  force.  While  not  committing 
ourselves  to  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  a  noumenai  and  a 
phenomenal  world,  we  are  justified  in  accepting  the 
existence  of  an  ethical  and  a  natural  order,  a  material  and 
a  spiritual  world.  The  moral  consciousness  demands  the 
realisation  of  its  ideal  of  Good,  but  this  demand  presupposes 
that  the  natural  world  is  adapted  to  the  ends  of  the  spirit. 
The  possibility  of  this  adaptation  is  contained  in  the 
conception  of  an  ethical  God  who  is  ground  of  both  worlds 
and  pledge  of  their  harmony.  Though  we  do  not 
demonstrate  God's  existence  in  this  way,  we  at  least  show 
how  the  postulate  of  his  existence  solves  an  urgent  ethical 
problem.  Nor  can  the  argument  from  the  moral 
consciousness  be  made  to  yield  more  than  this.  The 
feeling  of  obligation — the  sense  of  duty — cannot  be 
explained  from  beneath :  no  naturalistic  theory  of  evolution 
can  account  for  the  birth  of  the  word  ought  in  the  mind  of 
man.  The  thought  therefore  lies  to  hand  that  it  must  be 
explained  from  above,  through  man's  relation  to  a  Moral 
Power  that  governs  the  world.  It  is  a  fact  of  deepest 
significance  that  man,  a  moral  being  with  a  sense  of  right 
and  wrong,  has  developed  within  the  universe,  and  we 
rightly  ask :  What  must  the  character  of  that  universe  be 
which  gives  birth  to  such  a  being  ?  When  we  postulate  a 
God  in  answer  to  this  question  we  are  basing  our  postulate 
on  the  demands  of  the  moral  consciousness.  And  this  is 
the  legitimate  use  of  the  Moral  Argument. 

The  Historical  Proof  is  the  name  often  given  to  the 
argument  e  consensu  gentium.  What  we  have  here  is  not, 
of  course,  a  proof,  but  a  suggestion  that  the  only  sufficient 
reason  of  the  widespread  consciousness  of  God  in  human 
minds  is  God  himself.  The  thought  conveyed  is  closely 
related  to  the  Moral  Proof,  which  finds  an  explanation  of 
the  facts  of  the  moral  consciousness  in  the  existence  of  an 


THE   THEISTIC   PROOFS  393 

ethical  Deity.1  Unfortunately,  if  we  take  the  argument  for 
what  it  originally  professed  to  be,  an  inference  from  human 
agreement,  the  historical  evidences  do  not  show  us  the  agree- 
ment which  is  necessary.  For  to  agree  that  God  is,  means 
little  unless  there  is  some  concord  in  regard  to  what  he  is. 
Now  there  is  a  consensus  of  belief  on  the  part  of  mankind  in 
some  Power  above  them,  but  in  regard  to  the  nature  of  this 
Power  beliefs  are  very  confused  and  conflicting,  and  they 
range  from  gross  materialism  to  refined  spiritualism.  If  we 
take  these  ideas  as  they  stand,  in  their  variety  and  mutual 
inconsistency,  we  cannot  build  any  solid  argument  upon  them. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  we  revise  the  proof  and  state  it  in 
the  light  of  the  idea  of  development,  it  assumes  a  sounder 
and  more  hopeful  form.  The  reality  of  God  then  becomes 
a  postulate  of  the  developing  spiritual  experience  of  human- 
ity. The  long  upward  journey  of  the  race,  during  which 
the  idea  of  a  spiritual  God  has  gradually  taken  form  and  sub- 
stance in  human  minds,  becomes  a  meaningless  movement  if 
there  be  no  Keality  corresponding  to  the  idea.  We  may 
add,  the  argument  from  history  does  not  depend  on  a  meta- 
physical theory  of  the  process  of  development,  nor  on  a 
speculative  conception  of  the  relation  of  God  to  man.  It 
rests  on  an  unbiassed  view  of  the  development  of  religion, 
and  it  puts  the  case  with  studious  moderation  when  it 
declares,  that  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  this  growing 
consciousness  of  God  as  a  spiritual  and  ethical  Being  has 
not  its  source  and  ground  in  God  himself.2 

When  we  look  back  on  these  well-meant  endeavours 
to  demonstrate  the  existence  of  God,  we  can  only  reiterate 
the  judgment  we  formed  by  the  way :  as  proofs  they  break 
down.  They  suggest  probabilities,  probabilities  of  greater 
or  less  degree ;  but  they  carry  no  conviction  to  the  minds 
of  those  who  demand  cogent  logic.  Proof  means  logical 

1  The  Historical  Proof  was  put  forward  in  substance  by  Descartes,  as 
the  reader  will  remember,   though  in  a  metaphysical  rather  than  in  a 
historical  form. 

2  It  was  the  same  motive  which  lent  vitality  to  the  Ontological  Proof — 
the  demand  of  the  spiritual  consciousness  that  the  Supreme  Value  be  real. 


394          A    SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

connexion  or  implication,  and  to  infer  God  from  the  world 
and  its  character  is  to  put  more  into  the  conclusion  than 
is  contained  in  the  premisses.  God  in  the  sense  that 
spiritual  religion  demands  can  never  be  reached  by  any 
deductive  argument ;  and  there  is  truth  in  the  trenchant 
words  of  the  late  Professor  James :  "  The  attempt  to 
demonstrate  by  purely  intellectual  processes  the  truth  of 
the  deliverances  of  direct  religious  experience  is  absolutely 
hopeless."1  Unfortunately,  it  took  men  a  long  time  to 
discover  this.  But  though  these  Proofs  are  in  principle 
unsound,  they  are  not  on  that  account  entirely  valueless. 
For  one  thing,  they  testify  to  the  confidence  of  the  human 
spirit  that  reason  can  support  the  claims  of  faith,  that  the 
God  who  is  necessary  to  the  inner  life  can  also  be  justified 
by  reflective  thinking.  The  Theistic  Proofs  are,  in  their 
own  fashion,  a  witness  to  a  persisting  conviction  on  man's 
part  that  his  religion  is  not  a  non-rational  attitude  of 
mind.  The  attempt  to  reach  God  by  rational  deduction 
may  be  taken  as  the  symptom  and  expression  of  a  constant 
tendency  of  the  human  spirit,  which  is  central  in  the 
religious  consciousness.  This  movement  carries  the 
spiritual  self  beyond  its  environment,  beyond  the  world, 
to  gain  a  deeper  ground  of  thought  and  life  in  the  Being 
whom  it  calls  God.  The  religious  man,  it  is  true,  does  not 
reach  this  goal  by  inference  from  the  world  or  what  is  in 
it :  he  is  prompted  to  take  this  course  by  his  practical  and 
experimental  knowledge  that  "the  world  and  the  desire 
thereof "  cannot  satisfy  him.  The  inspiring  motive,  alike 
of  the  arguments  for  the  existence  of  God  and  of  the 
Godward  movement  of  the  religious  spirit,  is  the  sincere 
conviction  that  the  world  is  imperfect  and  needs  a  deeper 
Eeality  to  complete  it.  Both  for  thought  and  for  spiritual 
experience  the  world  proves  unsatisfying,  and  so  impels 
men  to  go  beyond  it  to  find  its  true  explanation  and  value. 
The  Theistic  Proofs,  despite  their  shortcomings,  recognise 
this,  and  they  have  worth  as  the  symptom  and  the  symbol 
of  the  general  movement  of  the  religious  mind. 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  435. 


EXPERIENCE  IN  RELATION  TO  GOD      395 

C. — EXPERIENCE  AND  ITS  EELATION  TO  GOD. 

The  foregoing  discussion  of  a  well-worn  theme  has  at 
least  helped  to  bring  out  some  of  the  difficulties  which 
beset  our  investigation,  and  to  show  the  direction  in 
which  an  attempt  to  solve  the  problem  is  most  likely  to 
succeed.  The  ontological  value  of  religion  centres  in  the 
reality  and  character  of  God;  and  if  we  are  to  treat 
this  momentous  subject  fruitfully,  it  must  be  on  a  broader 
basis  and  by  methods  more  flexible  than  we  have  just 
been  considering.  There  need  be  no  longer  a  question  of 
strict  proof,  for  in  this  instance  the  conditions  which  are 
necessary  to  a  logical  demonstration  are  absent.  But  we 
may  hope  to  present  converging  lines  of  evidence  which, 
by  their  cumulative  effect,  justify  a  theistic  conclusion. 

There  are  two  lines  of  approach  to  the  idea  of  God, 
which  suggest  themselves.  These  lines  may  be  termec 
the  Cosmological  and  the  Moral  and  Eeligious.  In  the 
former  case  we  proceed  from  the  nature  of  the  universe 
it  is  known  to  us  in  experience;  and  in  the  latter  we 
set  out  from  the  facts  of  moral  and  religious  experience 
which  are  manifested  collectively  in  history,  and  also  are 
revealed  in  personal  lives.  The  one  argument  is  mainly 
concerned  with  what  is  commonly  termed  outer  experience, 
the  other  with  inner  experience:  in  the  first  case  we 
have  more  to  do  with  facts,  in  the  second  with  values. 
But  the  one  argument  cannot  be  ultimately  separated  from 
the  other;  indeed  the  only  hopeful  method  is  to  make 
them  supplement  and  complete  one  another,  so  that  each 
may  strengthen  what  is  weak  in  the  other  and  both  unite 
to  give  weight  to  the  conclusion.  The  tendency  to  use 
only  one  argument,  or  to  lay  almost  exclusive  stress  on 
one  line  of  evidence,  has  weakened  the  conclusions  of 
many  conscientious  workers  in  this  department  of  thought. 
For  instance,  men  have  often  supposed  they  could  arrive 
at  a  true  idea  of  God  by  a  metaphysical  interpreta- 
tion of  the  world,  taken  to  mean  external  things  and 
human  minds  in  their  mutual  relations.  The  conse- 


396          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

quence  has  been  that,  with  the  eye  fixed  only  on  the 
metaphysical  problem,  they  have  set  up  a  metaphysical 
abstraction  in  the  place  of  God.  The  late  Prof.  H. 
Sidgwick,  in  a  paper  on  Theism,  has  made  the  just  re- 
mark, that  there  is  a  difference  between  the  God  reached 
by  metaphysics  and  the  God  required  by  the  Christian 
religion.  And  I  think  we  may  generalise  and  say,  that 
the  religious  consciousness  always  postulates  more  in  its 
object  than  metaphysics  can  justify.  But  if  metaphysics 
tends  to  yield  a  formal  and  abstract  Being  in  place 
of  a  living  and  spiritual  God,  those  who  work  at 
the  problem  purely  from  the  side  of  inner  or  religious 
experience  encounter  difficulties  and  dangers  of  another 
kind.  They  are  apt  to  make  a  free  and  uncritical  use 
of  the  principle  of  analogy,  without  stopping  to  ask 
whether  their  use  of  the  principle  is  valid  or  not.  In 
your  anxiety  to  do  justice  to  the  claims  of  spiritual 
consciousness,  you  may  make  demands  on  the  universe 
without  considering  whether  the  nature  of  reality  is  such 
that  it  can  satisfy  them.  This  neglect  of  metaphysical 
issues  must  seriously  affect  the  stability  of  results  which 
have  been  reached  by  a  onesided  method.  A  theory  of 
religion,  or  a  theology,  which  is  consistently  anti-meta- 
physical, leaves  us  at  the  last  in  doubt  whether  the 
Being  postulated  in  response  to  human  needs  is  not  ideal 
rather  than  real.  Hence  a  speculative  theory  of  religion 
will  seek  ultimately  to  connect  these  lines  of  argument, 
the  metaphysical  and  the  religious,  and  if  possible  to 
harmonise  their  results.  Such  a  task  will,  no  doubt, 
involve  criticism  and  modification  of  both  in  the  interests 
of  unity.  For  convenience*  sake  it  will  be  necessary  to 
follow  out  each  line  by  itself  in  the  first  instance,  and 
then  to  bring  them,  if  possible,  into  a  vital  and  harmonious 
relation  with  one  another. 

The  scope  of  the  inquiry  and  the  method  to  be 
followed  in  the  two  arguments  may  here  be  briefly  indicated. 
In  the  first  or  metaphysical  inquiry,  we  set  out  from  the 
world  regarded  as  a  system  of  experienced  objects  and 


EXPERIENCE  IN  RELATION  TO  GOD      397 

experient  subjects.  From  this  common  basis  of  facts  every 
philosophy  must  set  out,  however  it  may  fioally  interpret 
and  explain  them.  The  question  then  arises,  What  do 
these  facts  imply  ?  The  attempt  to  answer  this  question 
means  an  endeavour  to  work  back  from  what  is  presented 
in  experience  in  order  to  discover  what  is  presupposed  by 
it.  This  regressive  movement  will  not  be  one  of  strict 
inference,  as  was  ostensibly  the  case  with  the  Theistic 
Proofs.  Eeflexion  or  speculative  thinking  must  be  allowed 
a  freedom  of  operation  while  it  braces  itself  to  the  task  of 
thinking  out  constructively  a  sufficient  Ground  of  experi- 
ence. This  thinking  takes  cognisance  of  what  is  given,  but 
also  goes  beyond  it,  in  order  to  unfold  its  deeper  meaning. 
In  this  way  speculation  will  try  to  make  plain,  if  it  can, 
the  ground  or  sufficient  reason  of  what  is  given.  Now  to 
develop  this  conception  of  a  World-Ground  implies  that 
we  accord  to  thought  the  right  of  speculative  construction. 
Such  construction  corresponds  on  a  higher  level  to  the 
work  of  the  man  of  science,  who  thinks  out  a  theory  in 
order  to  connect  and  unify  his  data.  To  some,  however, 
this  may  seem  to  allow  speculation  a  dangerous  latitude, 
and  it  is  usual  in  these  days  to  proclaim  the  futility  of 
the  a  priori  way  of  philosophising.  Yet  the  scheme  of 
investigation  here  suggested  has  nothing  in  common  with 
the  method  of  those  who  develop  a  speculative  system,  and 
then  try  to  make  the  facts  of  experience  correspond  with 
it.  This  mode  of  speculation  is  out  of  fashion  just  now, 
and  there  is  a  general  recognition  that  a  philosophy  of  ex- 
perience must  grow  out  of  experience  itself.  At  the  same 
time  any  metaphysics  worthy  of  the  name  must  rethink 
experienced  facts ;  and  in  doing  this  it  is  only  carrying  out 
and  completing  the  work  of  the  sciences.  For  even  the 
physical  sciences  go  beyond  the  phenomenal  aspect  of 
things,  and  seek  to  reach  and  exhibit  the  principles  and 
relations  on  which  phenomena  depend.  Such  results,  how- 
ever, are  necessarily  provisional,  and  the  metaphysician  sets 
himself  to  trace  the  data  of  experience  back  to  their  first 
principles,  and  so  to  find  a  broad  and  sure  foundation  for 


398  A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

them.  There  will  always  be  a  tentative  element  about  such 
work,  for  it  does  not  admit  of  the  same  kind  of  verification  as 
a  scientific  theory.  Still  a  venture  of  thought  is  inevitable, 
if  man  is  to  satisfy  his  rational  nature  and  gain  a  deeper 
insight  into  things.  And  there  is,  at  all  events,  the  kind 
of  test  possible  which  is  implied  in  the  degree  of  con- 
sistency with  which  a  speculative  theory  can  be  applied 
to  concrete  experience,  and  in  the  coherency  of  the  world- 
view  it  unfolds.  This,  then,  is  a  metaphysical  inquiry 
carried  out  from  the  standpoint  of  the  metaphysician,  and 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  it  cannot  give  us  a  philosophy 
of  religion.  But  it  will  at  least  show  us  how  far  meta- 
physical thinking  can  bring  us  towards  our  goal. 

The  other  line  of  inquiry  keeps  the  religious  experience, 
which  is  a  specific  aspect  of  general  experience,  definitely 
in  view,  and  sets  itself  to  show  the  relation  to  God  which 
is  presupposed  by  that  experience.  The  development  of 
religion,  as  a  psychological  phenomenon  and  as  a  historic 
movement,  is  a  process  so  characteristic,  that  it  requires 
consideration  and  explanation  on  any  theory  of  the  nature 
of  the  universe.  A  philosophy  which  does  not  leave  room 
for,  nor  give  an  explanation  of,  the  growth  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  cannot  seriously  claim  to  be  true.  I  have 
already  referred  in  this  chapter  to  the  objections  against  an 
attempt  to  solve  the  religious  problem  by  a  purely  naturalistic 
theory.  The  theory  which  regards  religion  as  the  mere 
product  of  an  interaction  between  man  and  his  environment, 
as  a  natural  relationship  giving  birth  to  material  hopes  and 
fears,  is  a  theory  which  in  the  long  run  will  not  work.  It 
is  not  without  a  certain  plausibility  when  used  to  interpret 
the  lowest  forms  and  expressions  of  religion,  but  it  ceases 
to  be  plausible  when  applied  to  religion  in  its  higher  and 
spiritual  stages.  How  a  religious  consciousness  generated 
by  purely  natural  causes  should  by  and  by  react  against 
the  natural  order,  and  finally  proclaim  the  inadequacy  of 
the  world  to  its  deepest  needs,  is  quite  inexplicable.  For 
why  should  it  thus  ignore  the  "  rock  from  which  it  was 
hewn  and  the  pit  from  which  it  was  digged "  ?  A 


EXPERIENCE  IN  RELATION  TO  GOD      399 

religious  soul  which  persistently  turns  to  a  goal  in  the 
spiritual  and  supramundane  sphere  cannot  have  its  suffi- 
cient reason  in  material  interests  and  sensuous  instincts. 
The  spirit  that ' denies  the  world '  cannot  be  '  of  the  world.' 

But  if  the  naturalistic  theory  of  the  genesis  and 
growth  of  moral  and  religious  experience  proves  to  be 
inadequate,  we  are  perforce  led  to  ask  whether  this 
development  is  not  to  be  explained  from  above  rather 
than  from  below.  In  other  words,  should  a  process  which 
issues  in  spiritual  values  and  ideals  not  be  referred  to  a 
Source  which  is  spiritual  ?  If  it  be  true  that  the  signifi- 
cance of  a  process  of  development  is  not  to  be  found  in 
its  beginning  but  in  its  outcome,  there  is  much  to  be  said 
for  the  method  which  seeks  a  '  sufficient  reason '  of 
spiritual  development  in  a  supreme  and  spiritual  Ground 
of  experience. 

I  think  we  are  justified  in  pressing  this  consideration 
on  those  who  are  sceptical  of  the  reality  of  the  object  of 
religious  faith.  Granted  that  the  idea  of  God  is  an 
illusion,  can  you,  on  these  premisses,  give  an  adequate 
theory  of  the  origin  and  development  of  moral  and 
spiritual  experience  ?  Now  it  is  not  enough  to  reply,  as 
some  are  inclined  to  do,  that  religious  beliefs  are  the  out- 
come of  imagination  acting  under  the  stimulus  of  hopes 
and  fears.  In  particular  cases  this  may  sometimes  be 
true,  but  it  does  not  explain  the  persistent  movement  of 
the  religious  consciousness  towards  a  Divine  Object  in 
which  it  can  find  satisfaction.  That  movement  has  never 
ceased  in  human  history;  though  mankind  revises  and 
changes  its  religious  ideas,  it  does  not  abandon  religion,  but 
seeks  to  express  its  religious  faith  in  some  more  adequate 
form.  Why  then  this  continuous  and  enduring  religious 
experience?  It  is  not  sufficient  to  refer  us  to  human 
nature,  and  to  tell  us  man  is  *  incurably  religious.' 
Neither  psychological  nor  historical  explanations  of  this 
experience  are  ultimate,  for  they  point  back  to  some 
deeper  ground  in  the  nature  of  things.  In  this  instance 
a  Source  or  Ground  is  needed  which  will  explain  that 


400          A   SPECULATIVE   THEORY    OF   RELIGION 

spiritual  nature  of  man  and  the  characteristic  spiritual 
development  which  issues  from  it. 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  the  developed  religious  con- 
sciousness is  that  it  finds  the  Supreme  Eeality  and  the 
Supreme  Value  in  an  Object  which  transcends  the  world. 
And  if  the  evolution  of  religion  cannot  be  explained  as  the 
result  of  mundane  conditions,  the  alternative  is  to  trace  it 
to  its  ultimate  Source  in  a  living  relation  between  human 
spirits  and  a  supramundane  Spirit.  On  this  theory  the 
religious  experience  which  leads  man  to  find  his  final  good 
beyond  the  world,  would  have  its  ultimate  Ground  in  a 
transcendent  and  spiritual  God. 

It  is  right  to  remind  the  reader  that,  though  we  speak 
of  explaining  the  religious  experience  by  reference  to  a 
transcendent  Source,  we  do  not  and  cannot  mean  explana- 
tion in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  term.  For  this,  we 
know,  signifies  the  establishment  of  rational  implication 
and  connexion  between  parts.  God  could  only  explain 
mundane  experience  in  this  way,  if  his  Being  were  bound 
up  with  that  experience  in  the  manner  that  a  system  is 
with  its  elements.  The  note  of  a  transcendent  Being  is, 
that  it  cannot  thus  be  co-ordinated  with  the  parts  of  the 
world,  nor  can  its  activity  be  rationally  deduced.1  Hence 
a  transcendent  God  '  explains '  experience  because  he  is  its 
Sufficient  Ground  ;  but  we  cannot  argue  from  the  Ground 
to  the  dependent  experience,  nor  can  we  show  how  the 
experience  issues  from  the  Ground. 

This  twofold  regress  on  the  Ground  of  reality  and  the 
Ground  of  the  religious  consciousness  will  help  us  to  do 
justice  to  both  these  sides  of  experience.  But  it  will 
bring  us  at  the  last  face  to  face  with  the  cardinal  problem 
of  religious  philosophy — the  problem  how  to  reconcile  the 


1  The  presence  of  a  residual  element  in  experience,  which  cannot  be  co- 
ordinated, has  been  emphasised  by  the  late  Professor  J.  J.  Gourd.  This  is 
the  leading  thought  of  his  Phil,  de  la  Religion  (1911),  and  determines  his 
conception  and  working  out  of  the  theory  of  the  religious  relation.  Siebeck 
(Religionsphilosophie,  p.  331  ff.)  points  out  we  cannot  deduce  the  activity  of 
a  transcendent  Being. 


EXPERIENCE  IN  RELATION  TO  GOD      401 

idea  of  God  which  is  the  outcome  of  scientific  and 
speculative  thinking  with  the  idea  of  God  which  is 
postulated  to  explain  religious  experience.  As  a  recent 
worker  in  this  field  has  put  it :  we  have  to  establish  the 
Being  of  God  "  in  such  a  manner  as  to  meet  the  legitimate 
demands  of  modern  science  and  philosophy,"  and  to 
expound  the  "  spirituality  of  this  Being "  so  as  "  to  afford 
evidence  of  the  essential  truth  of  humanity's  religious 
experience." l  It  would  be  too  much  to  expect  a  complete 
success  in  this  difficult  undertaking.  Even  to  show  that 
the  two  lines  of  evidence  do  not  run  steadily  apart  but 
converge  on  a  common  goal  is  to  have  achieved  something. 
For  it  means  that  science  and  faith  are  drawn  a  little 
closer  to  one  another.  A  philosophy  which  achieves  this 
much  has  not  failed,  even  though  it  cannot  comprehend 
all  '  the  deep  things  of  God/ 

lLadd,  Phil,  of  Religion,  vol.  ii.  p.  68. 


26 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE  SPECULATIVE  CONCEPTION  OF  A 
WOKLD-GKOUND. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

THE  task  of  Metaphysics,  like  that  of  the  special  sciences, 
is  the  task  of  explanation.  Like  them  it  seeks  to 
understand  what  is  given  by  reflecting  upon  it.  But  the 
scope  of  the  inquiry  is  different  in  the  two  cases.  The 
scientist  deals  with  a  bit  of  reality  which  he  selects  for 
special  study,  and  proceeds  to  'explain*  it  by  showing 
the  causal  connexions  which  are  involved  and  the  laws  or 
uniformities  which  obtain  there.  Hence  a  central  feature 
of  the  work  of  the  sciences  is  the  search  for  causes.  The 
truth,  however,  is  apparent  that,  while  it  may  be  enough 
for  practical  purposes  to  define  the  prominent  cause  or 
direct  antecedent  of  a  phenomenon,  a  fuller  insight 
requires  an  understanding  of  the  system  of  causes  and 
conditions  which  make  up  the  situation  or  context  in 
which  the  phenomenon  occurs.  In  other  words,  the  cause, 
defined  as  the  invariable  antecedent  of  an  event,  is  never 
by  itself  the  sufficient  reason  of  the  event.  Other  co- 
operating factors  must  be  taken  into  account.  Hence  the 
cause  expands  under  scrutiny,  as  J.  S.  Mill  showed,  into  the 
sum-total  of  conditions,  positive  and  negative,  which  make 
the  phenomenon  possible.  To  explain,  therefore,  means  to 
give  the  sufficient  reason  or  the  ground  of  the  event. 
Needless  to  say  no  particular  science  can  follow  out  the 
implications  of  its  problem  in  this  way  :  it  must  arbitrarily, 

402 


INTRODUCTORY  403 

or  in  view  of  practical  ends,  limit  the  inquiry  in  order  to 
make  it  manageable.  The  scope  and  purpose  of  a  meta- 
physical inquiry  do  not  admit  of  this  kind  of  limitation. 
The  task  of  Metaphysics  is  to  complete  the  work  of  the 
special  sciences,  and  to  find  a  sufficient  reason  or  ground 
of  the  world  as  a  whole.  In  this  task  it  has  to  take 
cognisance  of  the  results  of  the  natural  sciences,  as  well  as 
those  of  psychology  and  epistemology,  and  to  carry  these 
back  to  a  final  principle  or  ground  which  explains  them. 
So  regarded,  Metaphysics  is  the  completion  of  the  sciences, 
and  carries  forward  to  an  ultimate  issue  the  questions 
they  raise. 

Plainly  the  metaphysical  problem  bears  closely  on 
Religion,  and  Religion  has  a  direct  interest  in  the  way  it 
is  solved.  For  religious  faith  puts  forward  a  conception 
of  ultimate  Reality,  and  with  this  the  reasoned  result  of 
speculative  discussion  may  or  may  not  agree.  Thus  the 
findings  of  the  religious  consciousness  would  not  be  in 
harmony  with  any  speculative  theory  which  declared  that 
the  given  world  in  space  and  time  was  ultimate,  complete, 
and  self-sufficient.  Likewise  at  discord  with  the  religious 
consciousness  would  be  a  Metaphysics  which  pronounced 
the  ground  of  all  reality  to  be  unconscious  Will  or  material 
Energy.  The  interest,  be  it  said,  which  the  religious 
spirit  has  in  this  subject  is  not  in  itself  speculative  :  its 
interest  is  bound  up  with  the  relation  of  value  to  reality. 
The  spiritual  consciousness  is  deeply  concerned  with  the 
validity  of  its  values,  and  with  their  maintenance  in  the 
real  world.  And  any  theory  of  reality  which  leaves  no 
room  for  these  values,  or  discredits  their  efficiency  and 
persistence,  is  felt  to  cut  at  the  roots  of  the  spiritual  and 
religious  life.  On  the  other  hand,  a  philosophical  theory 
which  converges  towards  the  same  goal  as  the  religious 
consciousness  tends  to  strengthen  conviction  in  the 
ultimate  harmony  of  reason  and  faith. 


404         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

A. — THE  PROBLEM  OF  EEALITY  :  REALISTIC  AND  IDEALISTIC 
SOLUTIONS. 

An  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  reality  must  set  out 
from  the  world  which  is  given  in  common  experience. 
For  only  through  what  we  actually  experience  can  we 
find  our  way  to  a  ground  of  experience,  to  that  which  is 
ultimately  real.  But  obviously  before  we  can  proceed  to 
draw  inferences  from  the  given  world,  we  have  first  to 
answer  the  question :  What  is  the  nature  of  that  world  ? 
For  beyond  doubt  it  will  profoundly  affect  the  results  of 
the  inquiry,  whether  the  facts  and  things  of  the  universe 
around  us  are  real  as  they  stand  or  merely  appearances ; 
whether  they  are  solid  existences  independent  of  our  minds, 
or  nothing  but  states  of  our  consciousness.  So  it  is  that 
idealism  and  materialism  lead  to  radically  different  views 
of  the  meaning  of  the  world.  It  is  needful,  therefore,  to 
come  to  a  decision  in  regard  to  them. 

The  primitive  attitude  of  man  to  sensible  objects  is 
that  of  naive  realism.  Things  are  in  themselves  just  what 
they  seem  to  be  when  presented  to  us :  the  act  of  per- 
ceiving makes  no  difference  to  them.  This  simple  trust, 
that  what  things  appear  to  be  they  really  are,  is  gradually 
dissipated  by  the  facts  of  experience.  The  stick  thrust 
into  the  water  cannot  really  be  bent ;  the  object  which 
grows  larger  as  we  approach  it,  and  changes  its  outline 
when  seen  from  different  points  of  view,  cannot  actually 
do  so ;  and  the  seeming  flash  of  light  which  accompanies 
a  blow  on  the  eye  cannot  be  light.  Thus  there  grows  up 
an  elementary  distinction  between  things  which  are  merely 
sensible  appearances  and  things  which  are  real  in  them- 
selves. But  the  principle  once  admitted,  that  the 
perceiving  mind  may  somehow  draw  wrong  conclusions  in 
regard  to  objects  presented  to  the  senses,  was  inevitably 
carried  further.  Distinctions  of  colour,  and  of  hot  and 
cold,  which  notoriously  affected  different  people  in  different 
ways,  could  not  really  be  in  the  things,  but  must  be  due  to 
the  persons  affected.  Hence  was  developed  a  distinction, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  REALITY         405 

which  Locke  made  current,  between  primary  and  secondary 
qualities  of  bodies.  The  primary  qualities,  like  extension 
and  solidity,  were  in  things :  the  secondary  qualities,  like 
smell  and  colour,  were  simply  affections  of  the  subject. 
Presumably  this  remains  the  attitude  of  many  not  un- 
intelligent persons  at  the  present  day.  Nevertheless  it  is 
plain  that  this  kind  of  compromise  between  the  claims  of 
the  subject  and  the  object  cannot  be  final.  The  grounds 
which  determine  the  transference  of  secondary  qualities 
to  the  subject  are  just  as  applicable  to  the  primary. 
Extension  and  solidity  are  likewise  relative  to  the 
percipient  mind,  and  it  seems  quite  as  hard  to  say  what 
they  can  be  apart  from  being  experienced.  Destitute  of 
the  sense  of  touch,  what  would  solidity  mean  to  us  ?  or 
what  would  extension  signify  to  a  being  incapable  of 
making  motor  adjustments  ? 

For  long  the  disposition  of  natural  scientists  was  to 
cling  firmly  to  certain  realistic  assumptions,  while  admit- 
ting that  secondary  qualities  were  only  affections  of  the 
experient  subject.  But  in  process  of  time  it  became  clear 
how  radically  the  conception  of  the  nature  of  objects  was 
being  altered  under  the  penetrating  examination  of  the 
physicist.  In  the  search  for  laws  and  connexions,  brute 
matter  was  step  by  step  resolved  into  the  orderly  move- 
ments of  molecules  and  atoms ;  and  the  most  recent 
analysis  has  transformed  the  atom  into  a  system  of 
electrons.  When  an  investigator  has  reached  this  point, 
he  has  gone  far  beyond  the  stage  at  which  a  theory  of  the 
elements  of  matter  can  be  verified  by  an  appeal  to  the 
senses.  The  most  that  can  be  said  for  the  conception  of 
the  atom  or  the  electron  is,  that  it  is  a  logical  demand,  if 
we  are  to  form  a  coherent  theory  of  the  facts.1  The 
*  economic '  school  of  physicists,  represented  by  Mach, 
Ostwald,  Pearson,  and  others,  maintain  that  the  scientist 
is  here  only  dealing  with  '  working  conceptions '  by  means 

1  So  Cassirer,  Sulstanzbegriff  und  Functionsbegriff,  1910,  p.  207.  Prof. 
K.  Pearson  speaks  of  the  atom  and  molecule  as  'intellectual  conceptions.' 
The  Grammar  of  Science,  p.  95. 


406         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

of  which  he  can  efficiently  arrange  and  describe  pheno- 
mena. His  concern  is  not  with  intrinsic  reality,  but  with 
practical  utility.  When  students  of  physical  science  take 
up  this  standpoint,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  should 
discard  the  notions  of  force  and  matter,  and  should  find 
no  more  in  things  than  sense-experiences  or  possibilities 
of  sensation.  Thus  the  scientific  movement,  which  began 
in  a  pronounced  realism,  has  for  its  issue  in  one  direction 
a  form  of  idealism. 

Let  us  now  consider  how  the  attempt  to  solve  the 
problem  of  reality  from  the  side  of  the  subject  fares.  On 
this  view  there  is  no  reality  in  things  per  se :  their  being 
lies  in  their  being  experienced,  and  esse  is  per  dpi.  The 
world  of  objects  just  means  the  body  of  sense-experiences 
and  what  they  suggest  to  the  percipient  mind.  The  most 
familiar  expression  of  this  theory  is  found  in  the  writings 
of  Berkeley,  and  there  are  those  who  still  find  his  thought 
to  be  true  and  suggestive.  The  outcome  of  this  line  of 
thinking  is  that  matter,  in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  the 
word,  vanishes,  and  reality  is  found  to  be  minds  or  spirits 
standing  in  relation  to  a  Supreme  Spirit,  which  somehow 
impresses  on  them  the  orderly  series  of  experiences  that 
goes  by  the  name  of  the  material  world.  For  to  Berkeley, 
at  least,  the  connexion  and  system  in  our  perceptions 
bore  palpable  witness  to  the  operations  of  a  Divine  Mind 
which  constantly  produces  the  impression  of  the  world  of 
objects  in  our  consciousness.  Berkeley's  theory  was 
ostensibly  framed  in  a  religious  interest,  and  it  may  be 
granted  that  it  is  consistent  with  theism.  The  objection 
to  making  it  part  of  a  religious  philosophy  is,  that  its 
account  of  nature  is  transparently  inadequate.  It  is  true 
we  cannot  '  refute '  Berkeley  after  the  manner  of  Dr. 
Johnson  by  kicking  a  stone ;  yet  profound  thought  is  not 
needed  to  exhibit  serious  flaws  in  his  principles  of 
knowledge,  and  we  shall  content  ourselves  with  a  brief 
and  rapid  criticism.  And,  first  of  all,  it  is  not  the  case 
that  the  mind  is  purely  passive  in  sense-perception,  as 
Berkeley  supposes.  The  mind  is  always  active  in  the 


THE   PROBLEM    OF   REALITY  407 

process  of  perceiving,  and  is  occupying  itself  with  some- 
thing given.  Again,  consciousness  is  always  consciousness 
of  something ;  and  it  is  the  reverse  of  plain  how  this 
awareness  can  be  identified  with  and  function  as  the 
object  of  which  we  are  aware.  Moreover,  it  is  an  entirely 
illegitimate  assumption  that,  because  we  can  show  that 
experienced  objects  are  de  facto  related  to  our  consciousness, 
they  have  no  being  apart  from  our  consciousness.  To  be 
related  to  does  not  necessarily  mean  to  be  dependent 
upon.  At  one  point  Berkeley  admitted  this,  for,  like  every 
sane  idealist,  he  fought  shy  of  solipsism,  and  maintained 
that  our  fellow-men  have  an  existence  apart  from  our 
knowledge  of  them.  We  do  not,  he  says,  have  ideas  of 
them,  but  notions]  which  presumably  meant  some  kind  of 
rational  cognisance.  Yet  our  knowledge  of  others  is  only 
possible  because  we  perceive  their  material  bodies  and 
ways  of  acting,  and  draw  inferences  therefrom.  The 
argument  therefore  fails  to  establish  the  total  difference 
of  kind  which  is  necessary,  if  we  are  validly  to  conclude 
that  a  stone  is  nothing  but  a  presentation  to  consciousness, 
while  a  man  has  a  being  of  his  own.  Moreover,  it  would 
be  quite  fair  to  argue  that,  if  you  can  have  a  notion  that 
Smith  or  Jones  exists  independently  of  being  perceived, 
it  is  also  possible  to  form  a  notion  or  rational  conclusion 
that  a  thing  has  an  existence  over  and  above  its  presenta- 
tion to  consciousness.  Nor  is  it  evident  how  a  subjective 
idealism  of  this  type  could  offer  a  satisfactory  explanation 
why  human  beings  should  appear  to  be  possessed  of  bodies 
and  brains  at  all.  On  this  view  the  correlation  of  mind 
and  body  must  be  an  inexplicable  illusion.  Our  presenta- 
tions, it  may  be  added,  form  a  continuum  which  is 
complex,  and  features  which  enter  into  the  presentational 
field  of  consciousness  imply  the  existence  of  other  features 
— features  which  we  do  not  perceive  at  the  time,  but 
which  in  other  circumstances  we  might  have  perceived, 
or  may  come  to  perceive.  To  evade  these  difficulties  the 
Berkeleian  idealist  has  to  postulate  a  hypothetical  exist- 
ence in  the  Divine  Mind  for  these  implied  existences.  I 


408         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

return  to  my  room  and  the  cold  makes  me  aware  of  the 
fact  that  the  fire  has  gone  out  in  my  absence :  the  inferred 
process  of  extinction  on  the  part  of  the  fire,  therefore, 
took  place  in  the  Divine  Mind !  The  artificiality  of  such 
a  hypothesis  is  all  against  its  truth.  This  implication  of 
what  exists  beyond  consciousness  with  what  exists  within 
it  points  to  an  objective  order  which  does  not  depend  on 
the  experient  mind.  The  world  which  is  the  common 
meeting-place  of  minds,  and  forms  the  basis  of  social  life 
and  the  open  field  for  scientific  inquiry,  must  possess  a 
reality  of  its  own. 

The  critical  philosophy  of  Kant  was  a  fact  of  cardinal 
importance  for  the  later  development  of  idealism.  In 
particular,  the  stress  he  laid  on  the  distinction  of  the 
form  and  the  matter  of  knowledge,  and  his  endeavour 
to  exhibit  the  articulation  of  the  form  as  an  expression 
of  the  unity  of  self-consciousness,  helped  to  fix  the  lines 
on  which  transcendental  idealism  was  to  evolve.  More- 
over, the  ill-adjusted  compromise  made  by  Kant  between 
idealism  and  realism  provoked  an  endeavour  to  work 
out  the  problem  of  knowledge  and  reality  in  a  more 
thorough  and  systematic  way.  Mind  or  self-consciousness, 
it  was  urged,  must  come  to  its  own,  and  embrace  within 
itself  the  difference  of  subject  and  object.  So  in  the 
hands  of  Kant's  successors,  and  notably  in  those  of  Hegel, 
idealism  became  an  absolute  system  and  a  rational  theory 
of  the  universe.  I  will  content  myself  with  asking  here, 
whether  this  far-reaching  system  does  justice  to  that 
world  of  common  experience  from  which  all  speculative 
theories  must  set  out.  Hegel  fully  accepts  the  principle 
that  relation  of  objects  to  mind  means  dependence  on 
mind,  and  he  holds  that  the  development  of  the  structure 
of  thought  is  the  key  to  the  development  of  the  objective 
world.  Hence  it  is  a  cardinal  doctrine  of  his  philosophy, 
that  to  follow  the  dialectic  movement  of  reason  is  to 
tread  the  pathway  which  leads  to  ultimate  Reality. 
Begin  with  simple  being,  which  is  just  elementary 
consciousness,  and  you  find  the  immanent  movement  of 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  REALITY          409 

thought  inevitably  carries  you  forward :  one  category 
after  another  is  found  to  be  onesided  and  to  imply  a 
complementary  idea ;  these  in  turn  imply  a  third  and 
richer  idea;  and  so  we  proceed  developing  an  ever 
widening  network  of  relations.  As  the  body  of  rational 
relations  or  thought-determinations  advances  to  complete- 
ness we  come  nearer  to  Eeality;  and  in  perfectly 
articulated  reason  or  self-consciousness  we  reach  what 
is  absolutely  Keal.  We  have  gained  Eeality  which  is 
perfect,  all-inclusive,  and  individual.  Under  the  trans- 
forming influence  of  this  dialectic  objects  seemingly  hard 
and  fast  become  fluid ;  they  pass  into  the  system  of 
relations  which  they  involve,  and  only  a  process  of  false 
abstraction  leads  us  to  attribute  to  them  a  being  of  their 
own.  The  result  of  this  line  of  idealistic  thought  is 
to  reduce  the  world  of  seemingly  fixed  and  separate 
things  to  a  kind  of  dissolving  view.  The  very  appear- 
ance of  independence  in  objects  is  due  to  abstraction: 
systematic  thinking  by  its  rigorous  movement  corrects 
this  pluralism  begotten  of  abstraction,  and  substitutes 
for  it  a  single  real  Being  or  individual  Whole,  which 
takes  up  all  difference  into  the  movement  of  its  own 
life. 

This  comprehensive  system  of  philosophy  has  a  close 
bearing  on  the  problem  of  truth  in  religion.  To  accept 
it  means  that  the  claim  of  religious  faith  to  have  its 
goal  in  a  Eeality  transcending  the  present  world-order 
must  at  least  be  substantially  modified.  For  the  spiritual 
world  to  Absolute  Idealism  can  only  mean  a  deeper 
insight  into,  and  a  fuller  realisation  of,  the  truth  of  the 
present  world.  The  secret  of  life  is  not  to  look  above 
the  present  order  but  to  look  more  deeply  into  it,  and 
that  with  a  mind  purged  of  false  abstractions.  Nor  can 
individuals  have  any  being  for  themselves  apart  from 
the  Absolute  or  God,  who  is  identical  with  the  world - 
system.  Or  if  we  hold,  with  an  eminent  interpreter 
of  Hegel,  that  individual  selves  are  real,  then  the  Absolute 
means  only  the  eternal  system  of  selves,  who  neither 


410         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

begin  to  be  nor  pass  away.1  In  which  case  there  is 
no  room  for  a  God  in  the  religious  sense  of  the  word. 
In  either  case,  therefore,  it  is  important  to  ask,  whether 
the  interpretation  which  Absolute  Idealism  can  give  to 
the  experienced  world  is  sufficient  to  support  the  claims 
it  makes  and  the  conclusions  it  draws. 

Now  it  is  plain  that  idealism  of  this  type  is  committed 
to  the  principle,  that  knowledge  is  constitutive  of  objects. 
In  other  words,  relation  to  knowing  consciousness  means 
dependence  upon  it,  and  excludes  existence  apart  from 
it.  We  shall  be  told  that  consciousness  means  "  conscious- 
ness in  general,"  and  is  not  to  be  identified  with  the 
purely  individual  mind.  But  it  is  not  apparent  how 
this  general  consciousness  can  be  real  and  function  apart 
from  individual  consciousnesses.  A  general  mind  which 
is  entirely  immanent  in  all  individual  minds  can  only 
lend  reality  to  the  object  through  these  individual  minds. 
This  means  that,  apart  from  its  presence  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  individuals,  the  world  would  have  no  existence, 
a  view  which  depends  on  the  false  assumption  that 
existence  means  existence  in  consciousness.  Moreover, 
in  these  idealistic  statements  the  difficulty  is  never  solved, 
how  knowledge  can  be  active  without  referring  to  a 
reality  beyond  its  own  process,  and  how  reason  can 
operate  if  there  be  not  something  other  than  itself  to 
rationalise.  Consciousness  is  always  consciousness  of 
something,  and  reasoning  always  reasoning  about  some- 
thing. The  inability  of  formal  idealism  to  account  for 
concrete  experience  is  not  a  matter  of  to-day  or  yesterday : 
it  is  manifest  in  the  philosophies  of  Plato  and  of  Aristotle 
as  well  as  in  that  of  Hegel.  A  purely  rational  idealism, 
if  it  avoids  dualism,  does  so  at  the  expense  of  failing 
altogether  to  account  for  the  individual  and  personal 
aspects  of  experience.  Relations  from  the  idealistic  point 
of  view  are  and  remain  universals,  and  of  themselves 
they  cannot  supply  the  specific  reference  and  the  unique 
setting  which  an  individual  object  or  fact  demands.  The 

1  Vid.  Dr.  J.  E.  McTaggart's  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology,  p.  25  ff. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  REALITY          411 

body  of  relations  supposed  to  constitute  a  'thing'  will 
not  define  for  us  this  which  is  perceptually  here  from 
that  which  is  there.  Nor  will  it  determine  for  us  one 
specific  member  of  a  class  apart  from  another.  It  is  easy 
to  show  that  an  individual  derives  meaning  and  value 
from  the  relations  into  which  it  enters;  but  it  is  also 
easy  to  show  that  relations  alone  cannot  give  to  it  its 
unique  setting  in  the  scheme  of  existence.  In  the  case 
of  the  conscious  individual,  we  know  that  it  is  not 
conceptual  thinking  but  feeling  and  interest  which  make 
him  a  unique  centre  of  experience.  And  when  we  try 
to  interpret  so  concrete  and  intricate  a  process  as  human 
history,  it  becomes  exceedingly  evident  how  inadequate 
are  universal  categories  and  principles  for  the  task. 

A  vigorous  endeavour  has  been  made  in  recent  years 
to  hold  aloft  the  banner  of  monistic  idealism,  by  showing 
that  it  can  be  stated  so  as  to  meet  this  difficulty  of  the 
individual.  I  refer  to  Prof.  Koyce's  Gifford  Lectures  on 
The  World  and  the  Individual.  In  working  out  his 
conception,  Koyce  employs  the  analogy  of  a  mathematical 
series  which  develops  in  accordance  with  a  law,  and 
possesses  a  definite  character  and  direction.  Each  member 
in  the  series  has  its  own  unique  place  and  meaning, 
and  so  is  determined  to  be  itself  and  nothing  else.  The 
Absolute  may  be  conceived  as  a  purposive  Will,  developing 
from  itself  a  world  of  differences  which  are  ideas  and 
meanings,  so  that  each  element  fits  into  its  own  unique 
place,  fulfils  its  specific  function,  and  represents  the 
whole  in  a  certain  definite  aspect.  The  point  of  Koyce's 
contention  is,  that  the  reference  to  something  independent 
and  beyond  itself  which  seems  necessary  to  individualise 
a  meaning — the  that  to  which  the  what  is  referred — 
is  only  apparent.  On  closer  examination  the  external 
meaning  of  an  idea  turns  out  to  be  its  internal  meaning 
fully  developed  or  worked  out.  The  something  more 
in  the  object  of  an  idea  is  simply  due  to  the  fact,  that 
in  the  developmental  process  the  idea  has  not  attained 
the  complete  content  of  its  own  purpose,  or  what  it 


412         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

has  in  it  to  be.  So  what  seems  to  be  the  other  of  the 
idea  is,  in  the  end,  only  the  difference  between  its  partial 
and  its  completed  development.1 

When  all  is  said,  however,  this  bold  and  thoughtful 
attempt  to  defend  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  reality 
in  terms  of  a  monistic  idealism  leaves  many  difficulties 
unanswered.  I  shall  refer  afterwards  to  the  point,  whether 
the  mind  could  develop  the  contrast  of  inward  and  outward, 
if  the  difference  in  consciousness  were  not  based  on  an 
actual  difference  in  fact.  At  present  let  us  note  that, 
though  an  element  in  an  expanding  series  may  be  uniquely 
determined,  this  by  no  means  shows  how  an  idea  as 
meaning  can  be  identified  with  an  individual  object  in 
concrete  experience.  Such  an  idea,  instead  of  embracing 
reality  within  its  own  development,  implies  reality  in 
some  form  as  a  condition  of  its  development.  The  truth 
%  *  is  ideas  interpret  but  they  do  not  constitute  reality  :  they 
reveal  meaning  because  they  function  within  the  context 
of  existence  which  goes  beyond  them.  In  his  use  of  the 
word  '  idea/  Royce  often  seems  to  hypostatise  it,  and 
speaks  as  though  ideas  had  a  reality  for  themselves. 
',But  ideas  can  have  no  being  outside  the  living  minds 
whose  activity  they  express.  And  the  character  of  the 
individual  mind  or  personal  self  gives  it  something  more 
than  a  perfectly  distinct  place  in  an  abstract  scheme, 
namely  a  being  for  itself.  This  element  in  personality 
Royce's  theory  neglects.  He  has,  of  course,  to  accept  the 
existence  of  a  plurality  of  spirits  or  finite  selves  within 
his  Absolute.  But  the  essential  drift  of  his  logic  and  his 
conception  of  meaning  is  to  show,  that  the  reality  of  the 
individual  lies  beyond  himself,  and  is  only  to  be  found  in 
the  whole  which  he  represents  in  a  certain  determinate 
aspect.  The  true  self  of  any  individual  man,  we  are  told, 
is  an  ideal.  The  conclusion  seems  to  be  inevitable  that 
individuality,  or  being  for  self,  is  appearance ;  the  only 
real  individual  is  the  universal  Will  which  realises  and 
sustains  the  entire  realm  of  meanings  in  the  movement  of 

1  Op.  tit.,  vol.  i.  pp.  329,  339,  534. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  REALITY          413 

its  own  life.  To  follow  out  to  its  fulfilment  the  meaning 
of  a  self  is  to  find  its  meaning  become  one  with  the 
principle  of  the  Whole,  and  its  reality  identical  with  a 
specific  self-expression  of  the  Absolute.  So  the  struggle 
to  do  justice  to  individuality  ends  in  a  frank  capitulation 
to  the  claims  of  an  all-embracing  monism. 

The  inability  of  idealism  of  the  Hegelian  type,  however 
skilfully  restated,  to  do  justice  to  the  concrete  facts  of 
nature  and  history  prompted  the  cry  in  Germany,  "  Back 
to  Kant."  And  the  desire  to  reconsider  the  whole 
question  of  the  relation  of  knowledge  and  reality  in  the 
light  of  the  Kantian  criticism  was  a  hopeful  feature  in  the 
philosophic  situation.  But  in  order  to  decide  how  far 
philosophic  deliverance  was  to  be  found  by  a  return  to 
Kant,  let  us  go  back  for  a  little  to  Kant's  epistemology. 
Some  comments  and  criticism  have  already  been  passed  on 
Kant's  theory  of  knowledge,  and  our  remarks  now  will  be 
confined  to  one  main  point.  That  point  is,  whether 
Kant's  theory  of  knowing  so  does  justice  to  the  variously 
qualified  world  of  experience,  that  it  can  serve  as  a  solid 
basis  for  metaphysical  construction.  If  not,  then  the 
return  to  Kant  will  not  suffice  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
situation. 

To  begin  with,  Kant,  it  is  clear,  never  committed 
himself  to  the  opinion  that  the  experienced  world  was 
entirely  constituted  by  the  form  of  thought.  Behind  the 
matter  of  sense-affection  there  was  the  "  thing  in  itself," 
the  thing  as  it  is  apart  from  the  process  by  which  it  is 
known.  Kant's  opinions  in  regard  to  the  "  thing  in  itself  " 
underwent  change :  at  one  point  he  appears  to  treat  it  as 
the  positive  ground  of  affections  of  sense ;  at  another  he 
speaks  of  it  as  a  Grenzbegriff,  or  limiting  conception,  to 
which  we  can  attach  no  positive  predicates.  In  the  latter 
aspect  he  commonly  speaks  of  it  as  a  noumenon  or  purely 
intelligible  object,  and,  as  students  of  Kant  are  aware,  he 
supposes  the  noumenon  to  lie  beyond  the  subject  as  well  as 
the  object  of  experience.  This  elusive  '  somewhat,'  which 
we  can  think  but  never  know,  is  for  Kant  reality :  in  con- 


414         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A    WORLD-GROUND 

trast  to  it  the  world  of  ordinary  and  scientific  experience 
is  merely  phenomenal.  And  he  finds  the  reality  of  the 
intelligible  world  guaranteed  by  the  practical  reason  or 
will,  which  demands  for  its  working  the  truth  of  this 
supra-empirical  realm.  In  this  way  the  claims  of  the 
religious  or  supramundane  consciousness  are  legitimated. 
But  if  Kant  is  right,  theoretical  or  speculative  reason  is 
of  no  positive  value  in  religion,  for  the  ideals  of  pure 
reason  are  void.  Now  Kant's  conception  of  reality  is  the 
direct  outcome  of  his  theory  of  knowledge ;  if  that  theory 
is  inadequate,  then  his  way  of  reaching  reality  is  involved 
in  the  defect  of  his  premisses.  Are  the  principles,  then,  of 
the  Kantian  epistemology  sound  ?  Note  at  the  outset 
how  entirely  futile  is  Kant's  conception  of  the  "  thing  in 
itself."  Its  suggested  presence  behind  the  matter  of  sense 
enables  Kant  to  deny  that  the  object  in  representation  is 
entirely  constituted  by  the  forms  of  knowledge.  Yet  this 
colourless  abstraction  does  not  explain  anything  in  experi- 
ence ;  on  Kant's  own  showing  no  specific  features  of  the 
object  in  presentation  can  be  traced  to  it.  There  is  a 
constant  tendency  in  the  Critique — and  we  venture  to 
think  it  a  wrong  tendency — to  oppose  the  form  to  the 
matter  of  knowledge,  and  to  trace  all  the  characteristic 
features  of  the  experienced  world  to  the  activity  of  the 
formal  elements  involved  in  the  unity  of  self-conscious- 
ness. So  sensible  quality  in  general  depends  on  sense- 
affection  in  the  subject ;  the  spatial  and  temporal  order  is 
given  through  the  forms  of  intuition ;  and  the  schematised 
categories  account  for  the  presence  in  experience  of  unities 
and  pluralities,  substances  and  causal  connexions.  The  net 
result  of  the  process  is  conveyed  fairly  in  the  dictum  :  "  The 
understanding  makes  nature,  though  it  does  not  create  it." 
In  criticising  Kant's  theory  of  knowledge,  in  order 
to  be  brief  I  will  run  the  risk  of  appearing  dogmatic. 
(1)  Experience  does  not  begin,  as  Kant  assumed,  with  a 
chaotic  *  manifold  of  sense,'  but  with  a  feeling-continuum 
in  which  orderly  differences  are  implicit:  recent  psycho- 
logy may  be  taken  to  have  established  this.  His  initial 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    REALITY  415 

wrong  assumption  led  Kant  to  overestimate  the  importance 
of  formal  synthesis.  (2)  Space  and  time  can  be  under- 
stood if  they  are  regarded  as  forms  of  order  already 
involved  in  presentation,  forms  which  representative  con- 
sciousness further  develops.  They  are  unintelligible  if  they 
are  treated  as  a  priori  forms  of  intuition  read  into  a  matter 
which  is  alien  to  them.  The  inherent  difficulty  of  Kant's 
theory  is  apparent  whenever  we  ask  why  the  elements 
ABC  should  have  the  positions  a  I  c  in  the  temporal 
or  spatial  order  rather  than  c  d  e.  A  pure  form  of 
intuition  is  powerless  to  determine  this,  and  yet  the  form 
is  useless  if  it  does  not  do  so.  Nor  is  it  open  to  Kant 
to  say,  that  the  "  thing  in  itself  "  contains  the  reason  of 
the  locality  of  objects  in  space  and  time,  for,  ex  hypothesi, 
it  does  not  enter  into  space  or  time  at  all.  (3)  A  like 
difficulty  meets  us  when  we  ask  how  the  categories  come 
to  determine  concrete  experience.  The  problem  is  to  show 
how  the  category,  or  general  form  of  thought,  finds  its 
specific  embodiment  in  a  concrete  case.  Kant  evades 
rather  than  answers  this  question  by  making  what  he  calls 
the  "  schematism  of  the  categories  "  a  work  of  the  imagina- 
tion operating  unconsciously.  Take  the  category  of  cause, 
which  is  schematised  in  the  form  of  order  in  time.  The 
statement  that  change  follows  a  necessary  order,  which  is 
termed  causal  dependence,  may  be  true ;  but  this  general 
rule  of  itself  does  not  help  to  make  nature  intelligible. 
The  scientific  organisation  of  nature  is  due  to  the  establish- 
ment of  specific  connexions  between  elements,  and  the 
nature  of  the  elements  determines  how  and  what  the 
connexions  are  to  be.  Only  experience  has  told  us  that 
oxygen  and  hydrogen  in  certain  proportions  go  to  form 
water,  that  water  at  32  degrees  Fahrenheit  changes  into 
ice,  and  at  212  degrees  passes  into  steam.  Our  under- 
standing of  nature  is  bound  up  with  our  knowledge  of 
such  particular  connexions.  And  it  seems  idle  for  the 
follower  of  Kant  to  say,  that  objects  in  virtue  of  the 
reference  to  self-consciousness  which  they  involve,  are 
determined  to  stand  in  some  kind  of  causal  relation  to  one 


416         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

another,   but     the    particular    way    will     depend    on   the 
character  of  the  objects  themselves. 

A  determination  to  a  relation  in  general  is  valueless, 
unless  it  is  also  a  determination  to  a  specific  relation ;  and 
this,  we  have  seen,  depends  on  the  character  of  the  elements 
related,  and  is  learned  empirically.  The  mere  principle 
that  every  event  must  have  a  cause,  or  that  change  must 
follow  a  necessary  order  in  time,  will  not  make  experience 
coherent  until  we  know  what  particular  changes  precede 
particular  effects.  There  is  a  chasm  between  the  general 
rule  and  the  particular  instance  which  Kant  never  bridged. 
Another  illustration  of  Kant's  inability  to  construe  the 
concrete  in  experience  through  the  formal  activity  of  mind 
is  supplied  by  his  Refutation  of  Idealism.  In  the  second 
edition  of  his  Critique  he  sought  to  refute  those  who 
attributed  to  him  an  idealism  like  that  of  Berkeley.  He 
tried  to  do  so  by  showing  that  we  cannot  reduce  all  ex- 
perience to  inner  experience,  for  outer  experience  is  pre- 
supposed in  the  constitution  of  inner  experience.  It  is 
through  spatially  determined,  empirical  objects  or  presenta- 
tions that  the  mind  can  define  by  contrast  a  portion  of  its 
experience  as  inward.  There  is  an  element  of  truth  in 
this  view ;  but  the  way  in  which  Kant  works  out  the  idea 
discloses  the  intrinsic  difficulties  of  his  own  position.  In 
his  statements  there  is  a  recurring  ambiguity  between  the 
conception  of  the  object  as  a  representation  in  consciousness 
and  as  something  independent  of  consciousness  or  a  "  thing 
in  itself."  In  other  words,  the  phrase  '  external  to  me ' 
carries  a  double  meaning  in  the  Refutation,  in  the  one 
case  denoting  independence  of  the  subject,  and  in  the  other 
external  representation  for  the  subject.  By  means  of  this 
ambiguity  Kant  '  refutes '  idealism,  and  at  the  same  time 
maintains  his  theory  that  mind  makes  objects.1  What 

1  Here  and  elsewhere  the  realistic  implications  of  Kant's  theory,  if  it  is 
to  work,  are  pointed  out  by  Pritchard  in  his  acute  book  on  KanCs  Theory 
of  Knowledge.  Dr.  E.  Caird,  in  his  Philosophy  of  Kant,  2nd  ed.,  1889, 
characteristically  tries  to  show  that,  in  the  Refutation,  Kant  was  vaguely 
feeling  his  way  to  a  more  comprehensive  idealism. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF    REALITY  417 

Kant  fails  to  recognise  is,  that  his  nebulous  "  thing  in  itself " 
can  never  make  the  representation  of  auobjectbenefundatum', 
for  a  representation  must  always  represent  something,  and 
that  something  cannot  be  an  impalpable  abstraction.  It 
seems  quite  clear  that  it  is  only  because  the  representation 
of  an  object  in  space  implies  a  transsubjective  reference, 
that  outer  experience  acquires  that  distinctive  character  in 
virtue  of  which  it  is  contrasted  with  inner  experience. 

This  somewhat  technical  discussion  will  have  been 
justified,  if  it  has  served  to  emphasise  a  fundamental 
weakness  in  the  Kantian  idealism.  It  is  Kant's  great 
merit  to  have  shown  how  the  orderly  world  of  common 
experience  implies  a  process  of  ideal  construction;  for 
objects  are  not  mechanically  impressed  on  the  mind,  but 
the  mind  is  active  in  their  apprehension.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  failed  to  recognise  that  ideal  construction  would 
be  meaningless  were  it  not  a  .process  of  interpretation. 
That  the  object  in  representation  is  relative  to  the  mind 
is  true,  though  a  truism.  But  this  does  not  prove  the 
object  we  represent  exists  only  in  the  mind ;  for  the 
transsubjective  reference  of  the  represented  object  is  as 
essential  as  the  subjective.  The  whole  trend  of  Kant's 
argument  is  to  show  that  knowing  is  in  a  real  sense  a 
making  of  the  object,  and  it  is  a  process  to  which  the 
'  thing  in  itself "  contributes  nothing  essential.  But  the 
more  closely  this  position  is  examined,  the  less  tenable 
does  it  appear.  Not  even  the  so-called  secondary  qualities 
of  body  can  be  conceived  to  be  the  pure  product  of  the 
experient  subject.  It  has  been  truly  said  that  a  fact,  like 
a  particular  colour,  which  is  realised  by  this  particular 
unity  of  consciousness,  is  also  capable  of  being  realised 
outside  of  it.1  And  the  observation  of  Helmholz  is 
perfectly  just :  "  Blue  is  only  a  mode  of  sensation ;  but 
that  we  see  blue  in  a  definite  direction  at  a  given  time, 
must  have  a  reason  in  reality.  At  another  time  we  see 
red  there,  and  this  reason  in  reality  must  have  changed."  2 

1  B.  Varisco,  I  Massimi  ProUemi,  p.  41. 

2  As  quoted  by  Riehl,  Science  and  Metaphysics,  Eng.  tr.,  1894,  p.  165. 

27 


418         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

The  Kantian  "  thing  in  itself "  is  by  its  very  conception 
unable  to  explain  these  features  in  the  object  of  experience 
which  cannot  be  due  to  the  subject.  We  conclude,  there- 
fore, that  relation  to  the  mind  means  the  relation  of 
something,  and  what  enters  into  relation  must  have  an 
existence  of  its  own.  For  relations  are  meaningless  apart 
from  a  basis  of  relation.  Our  conviction,  therefore,  is  that 
the  Kantian  epistemology  greatly  exaggerates  the  function 
of  the  form  of  knowledge,  and  thereby  fails  to  account  for 
patent  facts  of  experience.  So  we  come  back  to  the  old 
and  well-tried  belief  of  those  who  say,  that  the  world  of 
individual  things  has  a  being  of  its  own.  And  if  this  be 
true,  an  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  the  being  of  the  world 
will  form  the  introduction  to  any  attempt  to  determine  its 
Ground. 


R — INDIVIDUALITY  AND  UNITY  IN  EXPERIENCE,  AND 

THEIR    BASIS. 

Whatever  be  the  reality  underlying  the  world  of 
ordinary  experience,  it  appears  to  us  as  a  world  of  variously 
qualified  objects  or  things  which  present  numerous  features 
of  similarity  and  difference.  And  just  as  we  speak  of 
individual  persons,  we  speak  of  individual  things,  meaning 
by  that  a  certain  group  of  qualities  which  persist  in  an 
object,  and  mark  it  off  from  its  environment  and  other 
objects.  So  far  all  is  plain  ;  but  further  reflexion  reminds 
us  that  there  is  something  elusive  in  the  notion  of  '  thing.' 
The  use  of  the  word  in  ordinary  speech  is  sometimes 
arbitrary  and  not  always  consistent.  We  speak  readily  of 
an  event  as  a  thing,  though  we  should  hesitate  to  call  the 
atmosphere  a  thing,  for  it  is  not  here  instead  of  there. 
A  bit  of  coal  is  a  thing,  but  the  heat  into  which  it  is 
resolved  is  too  intangible  for  the  title :  a  stone  on  the  road 
is  a  thing,  but  this  character  seems  lost  when  it  is  built 
into  a  house.  In  common  parlance,  then,  things  change 
and  seem  to  pass  into  something  else.  But  if  an  object  is 
truly  individual,  it  cannot  have  and  lose  its  individuality 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND   UNITY  419 

in  this  arbitrary  manner ;  it  must  maintain  its  qualities  in 
some  way,  for  this  is  essential  to  its  distinctness.  What 
enables  a  group  of  qualities  to  possess  and  sustain  amid 
change  this  individual  character  ?  Evidently  not  the 
qualities  as  such,  for  in  their  nature  these  are  general  and 
may  belong  to  other  things  as  well.  Colour,  extension, 
solidity,  for  instance,  are  not  the  exclusive  possession  of 
any  one  object,  and  to  apply  them  as  predicates  is  not  to 
individualise  a  thing.  Nor  can  individuality  be  found  in 
any  hypothetical  core  or  substratum  which  persists  in  its 
sameness  or  identity.  For  such  a  substratum  under 
scrutiny  resolves  itself  into  an  attribute,  and,  owing  to  the 
generality  of  every  attribute,  fails  to  define  a  thing  as  this 
particular  thing.  Moreover,  a  substratum,  qualified  by 
attributes  and  responding  to  their  changes,  would  itself 
change,  and  could  not  persist  in  an  abstract  identity  with 
itself.  Owing  to  the  difficulty  of  finding  a  basis  for  in- 
dividuality some  have  concluded  that,  so  far  at  least  as 
the  material  world  is  concerned,  individuals  do  not  exist. 
That  they  seem  to  exist  is  due  to  an  arbitrary  and  abstract 
way  in  which  the  ordinary  mind  regards  the  world.  Yet 
this  theory  does  not  account  for  the  appearance  of  individu- 
ality, and  more  especially  in  the  case  of  organic  types  of 
being;  so  we  must  ask  if  there  is  not  some  better 
explanation. 

It  will  be  found,  I  think,  that  the  difficulties  in  con- 
ceiving of  individual  existences  are,  to  some  extent  at  least, 
due  to  the  material  associations  we  bring  with  us.  Of 
course  an  individual  must  have  a  reality  of  its  own,  but 
it  does  not  follow  that  this  reality  is  material.  The  so- 
called  sensible  qualities  of  matter  are  essentially  statements 
in  terms  of  an  experient  subject.  They  express  the  way 
in  which  the  object  affects  the  subject;  and  to  suppose 
that  a  material  object  in  experience  is  exactly  the  same 
thing  outside  experience  is  impossible.  T  This  is  a  kind  of 
naive  realism  which  cannot  be  maintained.  In  these 
circumstances  the  line  of  thought  opened  out  by  Lotze 
appears  to  offer  the  best  solution  of  the  problem.  It 


420         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A    WORLD-GROUND 

sets  out  from  the  idea  of  a  self  and  its  qualities.  The 
qualities  belong  to  the  self:  they  signify  the  states  by 
which  the  self  reveals  its  nature  and  maintains  itself. 
The  self  is  the  spiritual  bond  which  unifies  all  its  states ; 
it  is  present  in  each  state,  yet  not  identical  with  any  one 
of  them.  An  individual  in  the  degree  that  it  is  a  self  is 
a  centre  of  experience,  distinguishing  itself  from  other 
centres  and  maintaining  itself  in  its  changing  states.  If 
we  find  the  analogy  of  the  human  self  the  key  by  which 
to  interpret  individuality,  we  shall  conclude  that  a  thing  is 
individual  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  centre  of  experience,  and 
connects  and  organises  its  own  states.1  Now,  is  there  any 
reason  for  restricting  individuality  so  understood  to 
conscious  centres  of  experience  ?  The  answer  is  that  it 
is  hard  to  defend  such  a  limitation  in  the  face  of  the 
principle  of  continuity.  The  conscious  region  is  in  closest 
relation  to  the  subconscious :  the  two  spheres  pass  into  one 
another,  and  the  marginal  line  is  fluctuating  and  elusive. 
Below  man  the  animal  world,  in  its  higher  types  at  least, 
gives  evidence  of  the  possession  of  a  psychical  life  which 
involves  some  degree  of  consciousness;  and  between  the 
animal  and  the  plant  the  line  of  distinction  is  purely 
artificial.  Even  the  so-called  inorganic  cannot  be  alien 
to  the  organic,  for  it  ministers  to  the  life  of  organisms. 
The  principle  of  continuity  therefore  suggests  that  the 
individual,  as  a  centre  of  experience,  has  many  stages, 
extending  from  low  grade  individuals  whose  reactions  are 
of  the  simplest  kind  up  to  fully  conscious  selves.  No 
doubt  when  we  pass  below  the  protozoa,  or  the  most 
elementary  types  of  life  known  to  the  biologist,  it  baffles 
us  to  say  where  what  is  individual  begins  and  where  it 
ends.  And  if  we  postulate  simple  monads,  or  centres  of 
experience,  as  the  most  elementary  individuals  implied  in 

1  Cassirer,  whose  able  book,  Substanzbegriff  und  Functionsbegriff  is 
written  from  a  Neo-Kantian  standpoint,  holds  the  notion  of  'thing'  ia 
reducible  to  a  permanent  law  connecting  phenomena  (p.  367).  But  the 
generality  of  the  law  makes  it  inadequate  to  express  the  individuality  of 
the  thing.  A  centre  of  experience  is  ipso  facto  individual,  but  a  law  is  not. 


INDIVIDUALITY    AND    UNITY  421 

the  existence  of  the  world  of  things,  we  admit  there  can 
be  no  direct  verification,  just  as  there  is  none  of  the 
scientific  concepts  of  the  atom  and  the  electron.  On  the 
other  hand,  an  hypothesis  which  cannot  be  directly 
verified  is  susceptible  of  verification  in  various  degrees, 
according  to  the  way  in  which  it  works  or  helps  to  make 
what  is  given  in  experience  intelligible.  The  evidence  for 
what  transcends  immediate  experience  and  sense-perception 
will  always  be  of  this  indirect  character.  We  venture  to 
think  the  conception  of  the  simple  monad  or  elementary 
individual,  which,  by  combination  with  other  monads, 
enters  into  successively  higher  types  of  being,  offers  a 
better  key  to  the  understanding  of  individuality  than 
either  Absolute  Idealism  or  Natural  Eealism  can  supply. 
In  the  latter  case  it  is  not  apparent  how  an  individual 
centre  of  experience  in  any  form  should  come  into  ex- 
istence at  all :  and  in  the  former  we  have  merely  the  general 
schema  of  an  individual  instead  of  the  living  and  concrete 
fact.  The  monad,  on  the  contrary,  is  ex  hypothesi  individual, 
and  furnishes  the  permanent  centre  of  reference  for  its  own 
changing  states.  Moreover,  it  opens  out  the  way  for  the 
conception  of  complex  or  higher  grade  individuals,  which 
are  groups  or  systems  of  monads  unified  by  a  central  or 
dominant  monad.  Whatever  difficulties  may  attach  to  a 
theory  of  monads,  that  theory  at  all  events  tries  to  meet 
fairly  the  problem  raised  by  the  existence  of  individuality 
— a  problem  which  is  fundamental  in  metaphysics.  In 
doing  so  it  avoids  the  errors  of  formalism  and  crude  realism, 
and  it  also  enables  us  to  understand  how  the  subject  and 
predicate  relation  is  central  both  in  knowledge  and  reality. 
For  the  knowing  subject  is  a  self  which  is  the  centre  of  its 
own  experiences,  and  in  the  act  of  jxidging  follows  the 
analogy  of  its  own  being  by  relating  predicates  to  a  subject. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  monadologist  is  not  committed  to 
the  untenable  theory,  to  which  Kant  gave  currency,  that 
the  subject  in  the  activity  of  judging  actually  constitutes 
objects.  For  the  type  of  unity  revealed  in  the  cognitive 
life  extends  downwards,  and  a  centre  of  experience  with 


422         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

its  states  is  the  truth  which  underlies  the  notion  of  an 
individual  and  its  qualities.  In  other  words,  while  the 
activity  of  judgment  is  determined  in  its  form  by  the 
structure  of  self-consciousness,  and  all  experienced  objects 
must  be  construed  in  terms  of  this  form,  the  experienced 
world  by  its  intrinsic  nature  responds  to  this  demand  and 
is  capable  of  being  truly  interpreted  under  these  conditions. 
For  the  principle  of  individuality  underlies  the  natural  as 
well  as  the  spiritual  order. 

But  a  new  and  important  question  must  be  faced  at 
this  stage.  Are  the  many  monads  or  reals  originally 
independent  of  one  another  ?  and,  if  so,  how  do  they  come 
to  be  related  to  each  other  ?  Leibniz,  to  whom  the  con- 
ception of  the  monad  is  due,  held,  as  is  well  known,  that 
the  monad  evolved  the  whole  wealth  of  its  experience  from 
within,  in  so  doing  accurately  corresponding  with  the  world 
outside,  though  never  interacting  with  it.  At  first  sight 
the  conception  seems  intolerably  artificial.1  How  a  simple 
substance  could  be  endowed  with  the  potentiality  of 
evolving  the  whole  body  of  its  experience  from  within, 
so  as  to  be  independent  of  any  impressions  from  without, 
is  a  puzzle.  Yet  even  in  Leibniz's  scheme  the  notion  of 
mutual  influence  tends  to  reassert  itself.  His  corresponding 
centres,  though  they  do  not  interact  with  one  another,  are 
subject  to  determinations  due  to  one  another,  through  a 
third  Being  or  principle,  which  is  the  sufficient-reason  of 
their  correspondence.  In  truth,  a  multitude  of  reals, 
entirely  separate  and  indifferent  to  each  other,  could  never 
be  made  to  form  a  world ;  and  the  very  notion  of  diversity 
implies  unity.2  If  experience  is  to  become  possible  there 
must  be  some  community  in  the  elements,  by  reason  of 
which  they  affect  one  another  and  so  develop  experience 

1  This  conception,  seemingly  so  artificial,  was  not  reached  arbitrarily 
by  Leibniz.     He  was  led  to  it  by  his  logical  theory  of  the  analytic  identity 
of  subject  and  predicate  in  true  judgments  ;  and  also  by  the  mathematical 
notion  of  a  functional  correspondence  between  variables. 

2  "  There  can  be  no  experience  of  a  plurality,  whether  of  beings,  qualities, 
or  events,  that  are  absolutely  disparate  and  disconnected — that  is  certain." 
Ward,  The  Realm  of  Ends,  1911,  p.  222. 


INDIVIDUALITY    AND    UNITY  423 

in  each  other.  This  implies  that  the  individual  centres 
which  thus  act  upon  and  respond  to  one  another  form  part 
)f  a  whole,  and  are  determined  in  their  several  meanings 
and  functions  through  the  whole.  In  other  words,  that 
orderly  and  connected  interaction  of  individuals,  which 
means  experience,  implies  that  the  individuals  from  the 
first  form  elements  in  a  coherent  order  or  system.  Only 
on  the  assumption  that  there  is  already  unity  in  reality 
can  we  understand  a  coherent  experience  developing  within 
it.  For  order  cannot  be  rooted  in  disorder,  nor  can  unity 
be  the  outcome  of  chaos. 

Having  settled  this  point,  let  us  consider  more  closely 
the  nature  and  acting  of  the  monads  or  centres  of  experi- 
ence. They  have  been  described  as  real,  yet  not  material 
realities.  They  are  substances  in  the  sense  that  they  possess 
identity,  and  unify  their  individual  qualities  or  states. 
How  is  this  to  be  interpreted  psychically  ?  for  the  monad 
is  a  psychical  substance.  Without  doubt  the  basal  element 
in  psychical  process,  the  element  which  underlies  the 
development  of  feeling  and  thought,  is  will,  or  put  more 
generally,  conation.  As  we  trace  the  life-process  downwards 
to  its  rudimentary  forms  we  find  conative  activity  continu- 
ously present.  It  reveals  itself  in  the  reactions  of  the 
humblest  organism ;  and  these  reactions  are  purposive, 
for  they  are  life-conserving.  The  monad  at  its  lowest  is  a 
conative  unity,  while  the  very  fact  that  it  is  active  points 
to  something  beyond  itself  with  which  it  interacts.  At 
this  point  let  me  try  to  meet  an  objection.  Why,  it  may 
be  said,  posit  a  spiritual  centre  or  substance  at  all  ?  Is 
not  the  meaning  of  anything  just  its  activity  or  way  of 
acting  ?  A  so-called  substance  whose  reality  is  absorbed 
in  its  activity  is  not  properly  a  substance  but  a  process  or 
energy.1  In  reply  it  has  to  be  said  that  substance,  under- 
stood as  a  unity  which  maintains  itself  and  distinguishes 
itself  from  other  unities,  appears  to  be  a  conception  with 
which  we  are  not  able  to  dispense.  We  cannot  conceive 

1  So,  for  example,  Wundt  contends.     Vid.  his  System  der  Philosophic, 
1889,  pp.  290-291. 


424         THE   CONCEPTION    OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

of  activity  without  thinking  of  something  which  is  active ; 
and  qualities,  which  are  states  or  modes  of  energising,  are 
referred  to  definite  centres  to  which  they  belong,  and  do 
not  fly  to  and  fro  in  vacuo.  Moreover,  if  a  centre  of 
experience  is  resolved  entirely  into  modes  of  acting,  there 
appears  to  be  no  room  for  its  development  as  an  individual. 
That  which  develops  must  have  a  nature  of  its  own  which 
it  reveals  in  the  process  of  developing,  a  character  in 
virtue  of  which  it  maintains  a  continuity  between  the 
past  and  present.  Interaction  conditions  development  by 
supplying  stimuli  and  evoking  responses;  but  the  indi- 
viduality of  the  centres  which  interact  is  also  a  condition, 
otherwise  the  process  could  not  elicit  any  growth  of 
experience  in  individuals.  Development  then  presupposes 
an  inner  nature  or  character  in  the  centres  which  develop ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  growth  in  experience  implies  that, 
with  this  self- reference,  there  is  a  constant  reference  to 
that  which  is  other  than  self ;  for  it  is  through  interaction 
with  an  environment  that  individuals  evolve  their  functions 
and  their  meaning.  This  twofold  relation,  to  self  and  to 
other-than-self,  is  essential  to  the  individual.  There  is 
even  a  sense  in  which  we  may  say  with  Lotze,  that  the 
more  indifferent  a  thing  is  to  its  relations,  the  more  does 
its  actual  condition  at  a  given  moment  depend  on  them.1 

The  plurality  of  reals,  which  by  their  interaction  form 
the  basis  of  coherent  experience,  must  be  parts  of  an 
orderly  whole ;  this  we  have  already  decided.  But  how 
do  they  come  to  interact  with  one  another  ?  and  what  is 
the  explanation  of  the  consistent  system  of  connexions 
which  they  form  among  themselves  ?  As  the  problem  of 
the  relation  of  the  One  and  Many  this  question  has 
haunted  the  history  of  philosophy;  and  in  the  form  in 
which  it  is  here  stated  it  offers  a  hard  subject  for  meta- 
physical thinking.  Our  treatment  of  the  matter  will  be 
best  confined  at  present  to  the  statement  of  some  general 
principles  :  in  a  note  at  the  end  of  the  chapter  I  have 
entered  a  little  more  fully  into  the  perplexing  theme  of 

1  Kleine  Schriften,  vol.  i.  p.  135. 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND   UNITY  425 

interaction.  At  the  stage  reached  so  much  is  clear :  if 
among  a  body  of  co-existing  elements,  change  in  definite  indi- 
viduals calls  forth  corresponding  changes  in  certain  other 
individuals,  there  must  be  a  responsive  sympathy  between 
them.  If  in  the  case  of  individuals  a  b  c  an  da;  y  z  the 
change  of  a  into  of  is  balanced  by  the  corresponding 
change  of  x  into  x'  while  y  and  z  remain  indifferent ; 
if,  similarly,  the  passing  of  6  into  1)'  evokes  a  movement  of 
y  to  y' ',  while  x  and  z  remain  unaffected ;  and  if,  further, 
these  movements  represent  a  uniform  way  of  acting  in  the 
elements  concerned  :  it  must  follow  that  these  corresponding 
changes  are  based  on  an  affinity  between  the  individuals 
by  reason  of  which  they  are  mutually  susceptible  in  this 
particular  way.  For  the  nature  of  the  interaction  depends 
on  the  nature  of  the  things  which  interact.  Moreover,  the 
fact  that  certain  individuals  are  neutral  to  one  another  in 
a  determinate  situation  M,  is  ultimately  founded  on 
positive  characteristics  which  ensure  neutrality  in  that 
situation.  And  these  characteristics  go  to  explain  why, 
when  the  situation  M  changes  to  Ny  the  formerly 
indifferent  elements  are  now  reciprocally  affected.  Since 
no  elements  are  so  isolated  from  each  other  that  they  are 
incapable  of  affecting  one  another  in  any  aspect,  or  of 
interacting  in  any  situation,  the  responsive  affinity  must 
pervade  the  whole  plurality  of  individuals.  Lotze  and 
Prof.  James  Ward  have  termed  this  affinity  or  mutual 
susceptibility  between  individuals  '  sympathetic  rapport ' ; 
and  the  phrase  is  a  good  description  if  not  an  explanation. 
Sympathetic  rapport  between  the  elements  of  the  world  is, 
then,  the  condition  of  that  uniform  and  orderly  process  of 
interaction  which  is  at  work  in  the  development  of  life 
and  of  conscious  experience. 

Is  this  sympathetic  relationship  an  ultimate  fact 
founded  in  the  nature  of  the  elements  which  interact  ? 
or  must  we  go  beyond  the  elements  for  its  explanation  ?  It 
is  obvious,  I  think,  that  affinity  presupposes  unity  of  some 
kind ;  and  unity,  it  has  already  been  argued,  cannot  be 
the  product  of  elements  which  are  inherently  disparate  and 


426         THE    CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

isolated.  And  it  is  primd  facie  apparent,  that  elements 
taken  individually  cannot  yield  the  ground  of  their 
sympathetic  interaction,  for  the  very  idea  of  sympathy  is 
rooted  in  relation  to  others.  The  sympathies  of  the 
individual  depend  on  his  nature,  and  that  nature  has  been 
developed  through  membership  in  a  social  whole.  There 
is  truth  in  the  Aristotelian  principle  that  the  whole  is 
prior  to  its  parts,  and  this  principle  bears  on  the  problem 
before  us.  So  the  affinities  of  the  individual  elements  of 
reality  can  only  be  explained  through  the  system  which 
determines  their  place  and  their  relations  to  one  another. 
Sympathetic  interaction  of  individuals  means  that  these 
individuals  belong  to  a  whole,  and  while  there  is  distinc- 
tion there  has  never  been  isolation.  Immanent  in  each 
individual,  and  binding  each  to  each  and  each  to  all,  is  a 
unifying  principle  which  constitutes  the  whole  a  system  of 
responsive  parts.  In  this  whole  neither  the  unity  nor  the 
plurality  can  be  sacrificed.  If  unity  is  made  to  absorb  and 
annul  plurality,  interaction  becomes  an  illusory  appearance, 
for  there  are  no  individuals  to  interact.  If  plurality  is 
fundamental  and  absolute,  it  is  impossible  to  understand 
how  interaction  could  come  into  existence  at  all.  Never- 
theless it  does  not  follow  that,  though  there  must  be  a 
principle  of  unity  continuously  present  in  the  whole  system 
of  elements  and  immanent  in  each  element,  this  principle 
does  not  have  its  ultimate  source  and  explanation  above 
and  beyond  the  system  itself.  *There  may  be  reasons  for 
holding  that  the  interacting  system  as  a  One  in  Many  is 
not  an  ultimate  fact,  but  has  its  final  ground  in  a  trans- 
cendent Reality.  These  reasons,  if  they  exist,  will  be  found 
in  the  character  of  the  system  itself.  We  shall  be  in  a 
better  position  to  draw  a  conclusion  after  we  have  con- 
sidered the  nature  and  meaning  of  the  experience  which  is 
developed  within  the  interacting  whole. 

Our  argument  has  gone  to  show  that  the  plurality  of 
things  forms  a  unity  in  which  order  is  immanent.  The 
elements  of  reality  are  in  such  a  condition  of  relatedness 
that  the  mind's  demand  for  continuity  is  met  by  the 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND    UNITY  427 

constitution  of  the  objective  world,  and  reason  within  finds 
rationality  without.  In  the  manner  of  their  co-existence 
and  connexion  with  one  another,  and  in  the  changes  of 
their  inner  states,  the  monads  or  centres  of  experience 
exhibit  the  rudimentary  conditions  on  the  basis  of  which 
thought  elaborates  the  conception  of  a  world  enclosed  by 
the  continuous  wholes  of  space  and  time.  That  individuals 
originally  co-exist  with  one  another  is  the  basis  on  which 
developing  experience,  passing  through  the  perceptual  to 
the  conceptual  stage,  finally  construes  them  under  the 
generalised  form  of  a  spatial  order  where  things  occupy 
place.  The  notion  of  succession  is  based  on  the  fact  of 
change,  and  apart  from  changing  states  there  could  not 
be  psychical  experience.  Time,  as  we  think  of  it,  is  a 
developed  product  of  conceptual  thinking,  which  has  been 
elaborated  through  and  is  measured  by  spatial  images. 
In  a  more  elementary  form  it  is  given  in  the  simple 
consciousness  of  duration,  or  the  feeling  of  continuance  in 
a  process.1  But  this  consciousness  of  duration  would  not 
be  possible  apart  from  the  consciousness  of  change,  which 
is  primary.  The  fact  of  change  cannot  be  derived  from, 
nor  explained  by,  any  formal  or  general  conception  of  time, 
though  the  form  of  time  may  be  explained  as  a  develop- 
ment on  the  basis  of  reality  which  changes.  Space  and 
time  as  forms  of  order  are  not  read  by  the  mind  into 
experience,  but  are  the  development  of  an  order  immanent 
in  experience  from  the  first.  In  general,  one  would  con- 
clude that,  if  there  is  an  immanent  order  pervading  the 
elements  of  reality,  this  determination  of  parts  through  the 
whole  is  teleological.  The  unity  in  the  plurality  of  the 
monads  is  the  unity  of  a  system  teleologically  organised ; 
but  in  the  case  of  the  lower  centres  of  experience  this 
finalism  is  intrinsic  or  subconscious. 

The  unifying  principle  of  things,  as  we  have   before 
remarked,  will  be  best  determined  when  we  keep  in  view 

1  It  is  a  central  feature  of  Bergson's  philosophy  to  distinguish  and  to 
contrast  the  simple  and  immediate  consciousness  of  duration  (durte)  with 
the  spatially  developed  concept  of  time. 


428         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

the  characteristic  way  in  which  experience  has  developed. 
From  this  standpoint  the  true  nature  of  individuals  appears 
in  better  relief.  To  some  features  of  this  development 
attention  has  been  directed  in  the  chapter  dealing  with 
the  Theory  of  Knowledge.  Experience,  let  us  repeat,  is  a 
continuous  growth,  beginning  with  pure  sentience,  and 
advancing  through  perceptual  consciousness  to  conceptual 
thinking.  At  the  final  stage,  thought,  matured  through 
language  and  intersubjective  intercourse,  liberates  itself 
from  bondage  to  what  is  immediately  given,  and  reads  a 
universal  meaning  into  experience.  Mediate  thinking  is 
self-conscious  and  universal,  and  brings  into  being  that 
common  world  which  civilised  minds  share,  and  in  which 
they  are  at  home.  Not  until  the  subject  of  experience  can 
universalise  by  means  of  the  concept  does  it  become  self- 
conscious  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  and  only  with  the 
advent  of  self-consciousness  does  the  objective  world  assume 
the  form  of  an  ordered  whole  in  space  and  time.  The  two 
sides  of  experience  evolve  pari  passu.  The  essential  condi- 
tion of  conceptual  experience,  so  impressive  in  its  range  and 
so  significant  in  its  results,  is  intersubjective  intercourse : 
the  commerce  of  minds  is  the  spring  of  mental  progress. 

The  concept  gives  a  relative  fixity  to  experienced 
objects,  and  makes  it  possible  for  the  mind  to  deal 
reflectively  with  them.  Some  thinkers — Wundt,  for  ex- 
ample1— believe  the  character  of  permanence  and  in- 
dividuality ascribed  to  things  to  be  solely  the  result  of 
conceptual  thinking.  Generalised  thought  gives  a  unity 
and  fixity  to  objects  which  they  do  not  possess  in  them- 
selves. The  conclusive  reason  against  this  conceptual 
idealism  is,  that  a  transsubjective  element  is  implied  in  the 
whole  evolution  of  experience.  Interacting  minds,  however 
great  their  potentialities,  cannot  by  generalising  their  ex- 
periences create  a  common  world  for  themselves.  For  this 
process  presupposes  the  existence  of  the  common  world  in 
which  they  meet  and  interact.  In  order  that  the  multi- 
plicity of  rational  subjects  may  recognise  one  another,  and 
1  Vid.  p.  287. 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND    UNITY  429 

work  in  agreement  with  each  other,  they  must  meet  in  a 
common  environment,  an  environment  which  is  not  the 
peculiar  property  of  any  of  them.  This  environment 
supplies  the  medium  through  which  one  mind  can  act 
upon  another  by  means  of  the  symbolism  of  language. 
Self-conscious  mind  gives  us  a  world  at  a  higher  level  of 
development ;  but  it  has  itself  developed,  and  presupposes 
reality  at  a  lower  stage  of  evolution.  The  unity  of  self- 
consciousness  is  the  highest  type  of  unity,  but  it  supervenes 
on  an  organic  structure  which  is  a  unity  of  a  lower  grade ; 
and  as  we  trace  the  process  downward,  we  always  find  that 
a  unity  of  a  higher  order  emerges  on  the  basis  of  a  pre- 
existing unity.  Even  the  simplest  centres  of  experience — 
the  bare  monads  as  Leibniz  termed  them — reveal  an 
internal  unity  and  coherency  among  themselves;  and  if 
we  have  to  postulate  being  beyond  them,  it  would  be  a 
continuum  and  not  a  chaos. 

In  asking,  then,  for  the  Ground  of  the  experienced 
world,  we  must  remember  we  are  seeking  the  explanation 
of  a  graduated  development  which  proceeds  from  the 
simplest  forms  of  unity  to  forms  more  and  more  complex. 
In  man,  the  ripe  outcome  of  the  movement,  individuality 
has  blossomed  into  personality ;  and  personality  means  the 
possession  of  an  ethical  will,  of  a  character  which  is  the 
expression  of  spiritual  interests,  motives,  and  ends. 
Experience,  then,  is  a  matter  of  many  phases  and  stages, 
and  he  who  inquires  after  its  Ground  must  remember  this. 
The  higher  stages  have  to  be  kept  in  view  as  well  as  the 
lower,  and  the  principle  of  explanation  advanced  should  do 
justice  to  both.  It  is  futile,  for  instance,  to  put  forward  an 
Ultimate  Ground,  which  is  relevant  merely  to  the  concep- 
tion of  nature  as  a  mechanical  system,  but  neither  explains, 
nor  even  leaves  room  for,  the  emergence  within  the  system 
of  spirits  self-conscious,  reflective,  and  free.  For  this 
reason,  if  for  no  other,  the  materialistic  solution  must  be 
pronounced  impossible.  The  very  notion  of  matter,  in  the 
materialistic  sense,  is  an  unsupported  hypothesis,  and, 
instead  of  explaining  mind,  presupposes  mind. 


430         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

But  while  the  inherent  difficulties  of  materialism  pre- 
clude the  theory  of  a  material  ground  of  the  universe, 
there  are  some  who,  though  not  professing  themselves 
materialists,  are  reluctant  to  look  beyond  the  world-system 
for  its  explanation.  The  universe,  they  say,  is  a  totality 
in  space  and  time  which  is  self-sufficient  and  self-explain- 
ing, neither  coming  into  being  nor  passing  away.  To  this 
it  must  be  objected,  that  the  experienced  world  in  space 
and  time  is  not  a  static  whole  which  is  its  own  ultimate 
reason :  it  is  a  process  of  development.  In  this  develop- 
ment, as  we  have  contended,  the  individual  unities  at  every 
stage  of  evolution  point  to  conditions  beyond  themselves, 
conditions  which  make  possible  their  interaction  and 
growth.  Even  at  the  lowest  grade  of  conative  individ- 
uals orderly  interaction,  which  means  experience,  takes 
place  within  a  unity  or  interconnected  whole,  and  this  has 
to  be  explained.  What,  then,  is  the  ground  of  this  unity 
and  order  in  beings  which  are  at  root  spiritual  ? 

Any  theory  framed  to  answer  this  problem  must  make 
use  of  the  principle  of  analogy,  for  only  by  the  help  of 
what  is  given  in  experience  can  we  formulate  a  con- 
ception of  the  Ground  of  Experience.  The  important 
point  is  that  the  use  of  analogy  should  be  intelligible  and 
defensible.  Now  we  do  find  forms  of  unity  in  experience 
which  reveal  a  principle  that  may  be  extended  analogically 
to  the  ground  of  the  world.  The  type  of  unity  manifested 
in  psychical  process,  in  the  forms  of  life,  and  in  the  most 
rudimentary  individuals,  is  conative  unity.  In  every 
organism  the  active  principle  brings  about  an  order  and 
connexion  of  parts  and  processes,  so  that  each  and  all 
co-operate  to  realise  a  final  purpose  or  end.  Within  the 
world  this  active  principle  or  Will  brings  into  being  and 
sustains  those  interacting  systems  which  we  call  organisms. 
That  conation,  operative  in  the  simplest  individuals,  suc- 
cessively builds  up  higher  and  more  complex  types  of 
unity  within  the  experienced  world,  is  a  highly  significant 
fact.  If  Will  be  taken  to  cover  all  forms  of  conation, 
then  Will  thus  broadly  conceived  is  the  unifying  principle 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND    UNITY  431 

of  experience.  And  if  Will  is  the  basis  of  life,  it  is 
likewise  the  active  principle  which  co-ordinates  and  unites 
the  interacting  elements  of  the  organism.  But  if  Will 
can  build  the  elements  of  reality  into  those  more  and 
more  complex  systems  which  mark  the  evolution  of  life, 
it  is  plausible  to  suppose  that  a  Supreme  Will  conferred 
their  initial  unity  on  the  interacting  monads  or  centres 
of  experience  themselves.  On  this  theory  the  Supreme 
Will,  which  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  unity  or 
synthesis  behind  experience,  is  reproduced  in  type  in  those 
living  systems  that  appear  within  experience.  The  latter 
depend  upon  and  are  made  possible  by  the  more  compre- 
hensive unity  or  synthesis  revealed  in  the  order  of  existence. 
Keduced  to  its  lowest  terms  this  order  consists  of  simple 
monads  interacting  within  a  common  medium  or  environ- 
ment, the  whole  forming  a  system  of  which  an  ultimate 
Will  is  the  ever  present  Ground.1 

Is  the  final  principle  of  unity  in  the  universe  bare 
Will  and  nothing  more  ?  Or  must  it  be  conceived  as 
conscious  and  self-conscious  Will  ?  To  make  this  further 
postulate  means,  it  has  been  said,  that  our  use  of  analogy 
becomes  illegitimate.  Self-consciousness  involves  the  con- 
trast of  the  not-self,  and  it  carries  with  it  limitations  which 
cannot  apply  to  the  Supreme  Principle  of  things :  an 
ultimate  Will  must  be  unconscious  and  impersonal,  if  it 
is  to  function  as  a  universal  principle  of  unity  immanent 
in  the  world.  On  this  pretext  E.  von  Hartmann  advocates 
what  he  calls  the  '  concrete  monism '  of  the  unconscious. 
And  it  may  be  frankly  admitted  that,  by  making  the 
Absolute  unconscious,  the  pantheistic  monist  gets  quit  of 
the  awkward  task  of  explaining  how  one  self-consciousness 
can  be  in  or  a  part  of  another.  But  you  only  evade  one 
difficulty  in  this  way  at  the  expense  of  creating  another 
and  a  more  serious  one :  you  require  to  explain  how  out 

1  The  suggestion  that  there  is  a  continuous  medium  in  which  monads 
interact,  I  have  not  sought  to  explain  or  defend  in  the  chapter.  Some 
remarks  on  the  subject  will  be  found  in  the  note  on  "  The  Problem  of 
Interaction." 


432         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

of  unconscious  elements  a  self-conscious  being  can  develop. 
And  how  the  unconscious  can  prove  the  sufficient  reason 
of  the  conscious,  is  really  inexplicable.  To  account  for 
the  higher  stages  of  a  development  through  the  lower, 
is  a  time-worn  problem  which  has  never  been  solved. 
Teleologists,  from  Aristotle  downwards,  have  insisted  that 
the  thing  cannot  be  done,  for  even  in  the  working  of  the 
lower  the  higher  is  presupposed.  But,  it  will  be  replied, 
the  matter  is  not  to  be  settled  in  this  ready  fashion,  since 
the  argument  is  really  an  argument  ex  iynorantia.  It  is 
true  we  do  not  know  how  lower  elements  can  evolve  self- 
consciousness  ;  but  reality  is  not  measured  by  our  under- 
standing, and  it  does  not  follow  that  what  we  cannot 
explain  is  impossible.  In  answer  we  say  we  cannot  prove 
the  thing  to  be  impossible,  but  so  far  as  our  knowledge 
goes  it  seems  to  be  highly  improbable.  No  doubt  in  the 
case  of  a  human  life  we  see  a  development  from  mere 
conation  and  feeling  to  reason  and  self-consciousness. 
Yet  this  development  is  so  far  explained  by  the  fact  that 
it  originally  proceeded  from  self-conscious  beings,  and  was 
stimulated  by  the  presence  of  active  minds  in  the  environ- 
ment. Consequently  the  process  cannot  be  taken  to  show 
that  the  unconscious  is  able  of  itself  to  generate  the  self- 
conscious.  Nor  again  is  there  any  real  explanation  in  the 
theory  that  consciousness  is  a  biological  development 
produced  by  the  needs  of  the  organism  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that,  if  an  organic 
being  is  to  rise  to  a  higher  level  of  existence,  it  is  its 
interest  to  develop  consciousness ;  for  consciousness  opens 
out  possibilities  of  progress  which  are  closed  to  mere 
instinct.  But  the  fact  that  there  comes  a  point  in  the 
evolution  of  organisms  where  the  advent  of  consciousness 
would  prove  a  distinct  advantage,  is  by  no  means  a  sufficient 
reason  of  its  development.  For  consciousness  could  only 
issue  from  that  which  was  capable  of  evolving  it,  and  it 
is  this  capacity  in  bare  conation  which  is  not  intelligible. 
Nor  does  it  help  to  speak  of  consciousness  as  a  kind  of 
upward  leap  impelled  by  a  "primordial  life-impulse." 


INDIVIDUALITY    AND    UNITY  433 

This  would  be  more  plausible  if  the  advent  of  thought 
wore  the  appearance  of  an  accident,  and  was  suddenly 
evoked  to  meet  some  fresh  evolutionary  emergency.  The 
facts  are  against  this  supposition :  every  stage  in  the 
evolution  of  experience  was  prepared  for  by  that  which 
went  before,  and  the  higher  has  only  gradually  emerged 
from  the  lower.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  suppose  the 
Will,  which  is  the  ground  of  the  whole  body  of  experience, 
to  be  self-conscious,  the  process  of  evolution  becomes  more 
reasonable  and  intelligible.  We  do  not  then  need  to  take 
refuge  in  the  assumption  that  the  lower  out  of  its  own 
resources  can  create  the  higher,  for  the  activity  of  self- 
consciousness  has  been  present  in  the  elements  of  experience 
from  the  first.  That  growing  complexity  and  intimacy 
of  interaction  which  mark  the  advance  of  psychical  process 
would  have  a  sufficient  reason  in  the  self-conscious  Will 
which  is  the  active  ground  of  the  elements  and  of  their 
unity.  And  the  appearance  of  self-consciousness  at  the 
summit  of  the  development  would  signify  and  reveal  the 
nature  of  the  source  of  the  whole  process.  The  total 
movement  on  this  view  is  teleological,  for  each  successive 
step  is  in  the  line  of  the  goal,  and  the  end  was  prepared 
for  in  the  beginning.  If  we  reject  this  theory  in  favour 
of  the  idea  that  self -consciousness  is  a  product  of  lower 
elements,  it  cannot  be  on  the  plea  that  there  is  evidence 
for  the  hypothesis,  or  that  it  is  intelligible  in  itself.  It 
must  rather  be  on  the  ground  that  what  we  cannot  prove 
to  be  false  may  somehow  be  true ;  surely  a  highly  hazardous 
line  of  argument!  If  I  may  borrow  an  illustration,  it 
is  as  hard  to  conceive  a  blind  and  unconscious  Will  creating 
the  world  of  meanings  in  which  the  self-conscious  mind 
moves,  as  it  is  to  suppose  that  a  casual  mingling  of  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet  could  evolve  a  connected  and  rational 
discourse. 

If  we  conclude  that  the  World-Ground  is  a  self- 
conscious  Will,  it  follows  that  it  is  not  to  be  conceived 
as  a  purely  immanent  principle.  For  there  is  a  principle 
of  distinction  in  a  self-conscious  mind,  in  virtue  of  which 


434         THE   CONCEPTION   OF  A   WORLD-GROUND 

it  belongs  to  itself  and  is  not  merely  a  part  of  another 
self.  Those  who  term  the  all-inclusive  unity  of  experience 
a  personal  Absolute  never  succeed  in  reconciling  the 
Absolute  Self  with  the  multiplicity  of  finite  selves.  The 
form  of  Absolutism  which  reduces  all  reality  to  a  single 
individual  Being  is  confronted  with  an  insoluble  difficulty : 
either  the  Absolute  Self  is  real  and  finite  selves  are  an 
illusion,  or  finite  selves  are  real  and  the  Absolute  Self  is 
a  fiction.  This  is  the  dilemma  of  Absolute  Idealism  to 
which  I  have  already  referred.  It  can  only  be  avoided 
by  abandoning  the  theory  that  all  experience  falls  within 
the  unity  of  the  Absolute  Consciousness,  in  other  words, 
by  admitting  that  finite  selves  have  a  being  of  their  own. 
Hence  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  be  clear  what  we  mean  by 
saying  that  the  Ultimate  Ground  unifies  the  elements  of 
experience.  The  Ground  must  unify  without  thereby 
becoming  identical  with  or  being  absorbed  by  the  elements 
unified.  This  means  that  God  gives  unity  or  system  to 
the  plurality  of  spiritual  substances  or  experient  centres, 
though  he  is  not  himself  the  unity  in  which  they  subsist. 
But  he  is  the  Ground  of  their  unity,  its  source  and  final 
explanation.  Pluralism,  it  should  be  noted,  on  this  view 
is  not  ultimate ;  for  the  multiplicity  of  finite  centres  all 
depend  for  their  existence  and  their  order  on  one  supreme 
teleological  Will.  Finite  selves  and  the  mundane  system 
in  which  they  develop  are  all  sustained  by  God,  who,  by 
reason  of  his  transcendent  character,  does  not  reduce  the 
beings  who  depend  on  him  to  a  phase  of  his  own  life. 
Pluralism  in  this  way  yields  to  a  derivative  system  based 
on  the  divine  activity,  which  operates  through  all  its 
parts.  A  Ground  which  actively  conditions  experience 
in  this  manner  may  be  truly  said  to  unify  it,  for  it 
brings  about  in  all  the  parts  a  reference  to  one  Source 
and  a  direction  to  one  End.  But  while  God,  the  Ulti- 
mate Ground,  is  active  within  the  system  of  the  world,  he 
exists  beyond  it.  He  is  transcendent  as  well  as  immanent, 
a  Self  and  yet  the  sufficient  reason  of  the  society  of 
selves. 


PERSONALITY   AND   RELIGIOUS    EXPERIENCE      435 

C. — PERSONALITY  AND  THE  CLAIMS  OF  EELIGIOUS 
EXPERIENCE. 

The  second  form  of  regress  was  from  the  world  of 
values  to  the  Ground  or  Principle  on  which  they  depend. 
It  is  hardly  necessary  to  repeat  that  this  line  of  thought 
is  dominant  in  the  religious  spirit,  for  values  express  the 
manner  in  which  it  habitually  regards  the  world.  But 
though  the  realm  of  values  contrasts  with  that  of  facts, 
the  two  are  interwoven  in  experience ;  and  both  are 
embraced  in  the  system  of  ends.  The  previous  discussions 
ought  to  have  shown  with  sufficient  clearness  the  function 
and  importance  of  values  in  the  religious  life.  At  present 
I  shall  try  to  state  concisely  the  bearing  of  the  spiritual 
values  on  the  Ground  of  experience,  and  their  right  to 
influence  our  conception  of  it. 

Let  me  begin  by  recalling  our  previous  analysis  of 
value.  Conative  activity  expresses  itself  in  terms  of 
f  eeling- consciousness ;  and  at  the  simpler  stages  of 
psychical  life  where  intellection  is  undeveloped,  feelings 
regarded  as  satisfactions  figure  as  value-feelings.  At  a 
higher  stage  of  psychical  development,  where  thinking 
plays  a  part,  value-feelings  appear  as  value-ideas  or 
judgments :  these,  though  based  on  feeling,  possess  a 
general  character  and  meaning  in  relation  to  the  experi- 
ence of  the  subject.  The  inner  development  of  the 
subject  carries  with  it  the  development  of  values ;  and 
it  has  the  effect  of  purifying  their  content  and  extending 
their  scope  and  significance.  The  self-conscious  and 
reflecting  subject,  through  its  attitude  to  life  and  the 
world,  becomes  the  centre  of  a  more  or  less  complex 
system  of  value-judgments.  Man  at  this  level  is  personal, 
not  merely  individual  —  a  being  'of  large  discourse' 
looking  before  and  after.  One  can  hardly  overestimate 
the  importance  of  that  progressive  movement  which  has 
gradually  transformed  individuality  into  personality.  The 
former  is  the  initial  basis  of  the  latter:  to  use  a  figure, 
the  individual  is  the  root  of  which  the  person  is  the 


436         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

full  growth  and  flower.  Interaction  is  the  constant 
condition  of  development ;  and  it  is  the  interaction  of 
individuals  in  a  social  system  which  has  gradually  built 
up  that  civilised  life  of  which  ethical  personality  is  the 
ripe  outcome.  The  savage  is  individual  merely,  only  the 
civilised  man  is  fully  personal.  Largeness  of  outlook, 
variety  of  motives,  organisation  of  conduct  by  reference 
to  far-reaching  ends,  are  features  of  personality.  The 
distinctive  character  of  the  personal  life,  therefore,  is  its 
spiritual  and  ethical  content:  in  virtue  of  this  character 
the  world  and  experience  have  a  wider  and  deeper 
meaning  for  the  person.  The  momentary  impulses  and 
the  material  motives  which  rule  the  lower  man  are  now 
transformed  into  ethical  and  spiritual  interests  which 
inspire  conduct  as  a  whole.  Actions  are  regarded  from 
the  point  of  view  of  duty  or  ethical  obligation,  and  life 
itself  is  conceived  to  be  a  spiritual  vocation.  Behind 
the  conception  of  particular  duties  and  of  personal 
vocation  lies  the  idea  of  an  ethical  end  which  the  person 
must  strive  to  realise,  and  by  reference  to  which  he 
must  organise  his  conduct.  The  notion  of  ethical  end 
is  completed  by  the  notion  of  a  religious  ideal  which 
expresses  the  ultimate  goal  of  personal  life.  It  is  through 
his  spiritual  value-experiences  that  man  comes  to  the 
consciousness  of  his  spiritual  end,  and  the  end  in  turn 
enables  him  to  define  and  systematise  his  ideas  of  value. 
These  value-ideas  enter  into  the  very  spirit  and  movement 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  and  they  express  certain 
demands  which  the  religious  mind  makes  on  the  existing 
world.  The  value-judgments  of  religion  may  be  regarded 
in  a  double  aspect:  (a)  in  relation  to  God,  and  (b)  in 
relation  to  the  world. 

(a)  While  the  religious  consciousness  always  affirms 
the  existence  of  the  object  of  its  faith,  it  never  rests  in 
the  bare  affirmation  of  existence.  In  and  with  the  asser- 
tion of  existence  there  goes  the  assertion  of  value ;  and 
only  in  virtue  of  the  value  which  is  conceived  to  belong 
to  it  does  the  object  possess  a  religious  significance.  The 


PERSONALITY   AND    RELIGIOUS    EXPERIENCE      437 

value  of  which  God  is  the  embodiment  to  his  worshipper 
is  a  demand  made  by  the  spiritual  life  of  the  latter  in 
response  to  its  inner  needs :  it  is  claimed,  not  deduced ; 
it  is  a  postulate,  not  an  inference.  The  postulate  is  not 
susceptible  of  a  strict  and  direct  proof ;  its  justification 
lies  in  the  meaning  and  connexion  it  gives  to  the  normal 
facts  of  religious  experience,  and  in  the  way  it  ministers 
to  man's  spiritual  self-fulfilment. 

In  asking  more  particularly  about  the  nature  of  this 
demand  we  are  entitled  to  take  religion  in  its  highest  and 
most  developed  form,  because  it  is  not  in  its  lowly  begin- 
nings but  in  its  ripe  result  that  the  religious  spirit  is  best 
revealed.  Now  the  values  of  higher  religion  are  essentially 
ethical  and  spiritual,  and  the  higher  religious  consciousness 
postulates  an  ethical  and  spiritual  God.  For  man  seeks  in 
God  the  completion  and  fulfilment  of  the  good  he  is 
struggling  to  realise  in  his  own  life.  The  ethical  values 
of  experience  would  lack  meaning  and  coherency  were 
they  not  connected  and  unified  by  a  supreme  Value.  No 
doubt  from  the  purely  mundane  point  of  view  it  is  not 
possible  to  give  a  satisfying  and  consistent  definition  of  the 
supreme  Value ;  for  an  ethical  ideal,  if  it  is  to  be  absolute, 
cannot  be  adequately  stated  in  terms  of  human  relation- 
ships. But  it  is  just  here  that  religion,  with  its  reference 
to  the  transcendent  world,  completes  and  perfects  the 
ethical  idea  of  Good.  By  an  act  of  faith  the  religious 
mind  passes  beyond  the  region  of  mundane  relations  and 
partial  values,  and  posits  the  ground  and  consummation  of 
all  values  in  an  Eternal  Value.  The  Absolute  Good  is  not 
a  formal  ideal,  but  a  self-conscious  Spirit  who  perfectly 
realises  in  himself  the  good  which  men  realise  only  in 
a  partial  and  fragmentary  fashion.  Eeligion  solves  the 
moral  problem  by  transforming  the  life  of  endless 
endeavour  and  aspiration  into  that  of  personal  fellowship « 
with  the  perfect  Good.  The  moral  ideal  which  man  fails'". 
to  achieve  for  himself  is  won  in  the  form  of  a  spiritual 
good  realised  in  communion  with  the  divine  Source  of  all 
Good.  This  postulate  of  a  Supreme  and  Divine  Good  is 


438         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

not  arbitrary:  it  is  the  outcome  of  man's  deeper  needs, 
and  is  implied  in  the  harmonious  organisation  of  the 
ethical  and  religious  life.  The  essential  fact  about  the 
mundane  life  and  its  relationships  is,  that  it  neither  is 
^nor  can  be  made  complete  and  satisfying.  The  soul  is 
.  greater  than  its  temporal  environment  and  can  never  be 
'filled  by  it,  for  "man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone."  This 
"  inner  insufficiency  of  earthly  goods  impels  the  religious 
spirit  to  go  beyond  the  world  and  seek  its  goal  in  a 
transcendent  Good.  Hence  the  need  and  the  demand  for 
a  spiritual  God  in  and  through  whom  the  soul  can  find 
completion  and  harmony.  It  would  indeed  be  a  mystery, 
if  not  a  contradiction,  that  beings  should  develop  in 
time  who  continuously  make  these  demands,  if  the  de- 
mands are  quite  mistaken  and  are  doomed  to  receive  no 
satisfaction. 

(b)  Let  us  now  consider  the  bearing  of  the  religious 
postulate  on  the  world  of  experience,  and  the  way  in 
which  it  works  there.  I  have  already  suggested  the 
important  office  performed  by  the  idea  of  an  ethical  and 
spiritual  God  in  giving  unity  and  coherence  to  the  values 
of  the  moral  and  religious  life.  Consistency  and  harmony 
in  our  valuations,  as  well  as  due  gradation  of  values,  can 
only  be  secured  by  the  acceptance  of  an  ultimate  value ; 
and  on  the  reality  of  this  ultimate  value  the  validity  of 
the  whole  system  depends.  Value  is  only  a  living  fact  in 
the  experience  of  a  self-conscious  mind,  and  a  supreme 
;  and  ultimate  value,  if  it  is  to  be  real,  must  be  an  absolute 
•  and  self-conscious  ethical  Spirit.  The  realm  of  values  is 
the  realm  of  persons :  impersonal  substances  cannot  acquire 
value,  or  become  goods,  except  through  relation  to  personal 
spirits.  The  postulate  therefore  of  God  as  the  supreme 
ethical  Person  gives  the  desired  guarantee  for  the  objec- 
tivity of  the  religious  values.  And  the  notion  of  God  as 
•  teleological  ground  of  experience  is  necessary  if  existence 
'  and  value  are  to  be  harmonised,  and  the  rule  of  the  good 
in  the  universe  is  to  be  assured.  Were  the  final  Ground 
of  things  a  non-moral  Being,  there  could  be  no  assurance 


PERSONALITY   AND    RELIGIOUS    EXPERIENCE      439 

that  the  ethical  ends  and  the  religious  ideals  of  humanity  ' 
were  not  doomed  to  failure  and  defeat.  The  religious  idea  * 
of  God,  who  is  a  self-conscious  and  an  ethical  Spirit,  is  a 
pledge  that  the  teleological  principle  which  is  essential  to 
the  meaning  and  order  of  the  personal  life  has  a  wider 
range,  and  governs  the  development  of  the  whole  world. 
A  God  who  is  good  must  secure  the  predominance  of  good  I 
in  his  universe.  Were  the  universe  hostile  or  intractable 
to  the  realisation  of  ethical  ends,  humanity  could  have  no 
confidence  in  the  possibility  of  working  out  its  spiritual 
vocation.  For  the  close  of  all  endeavour  might  well  be 
final  defeat  at  the  hands  of  lower  forces.  Hence  the 
conception  of  a  divinely-ordered  system  of  things  made 
subordinate  to  ethical  ends  is  of  high  worth  to  the  life  of 
religious  individuals.  It  delivers  them  from  the  fear  of 
an  alien  universe,  and  gives  them  courage  and  confidence 
to  fulfil  their  vocation :  it  enables  them  to  act  in  the 
hope  that  "  all  things  work  together  for  good,"  and  to  live 
and  strive  in  "  the  full  assurance  of  faith."  The  religious 
man  who  knows  that  his  highest  interest  and  truest  self- 
fulfilment  is  to  realise  the  good,  would  feel  himself  like  an 
outcast  in  a  foreign  land  were  he  compelled  to  believe 
that  the  Ground  of  all  things  is  a  Being  morally  in- 
different. For  ethical  and  religious  ends  have  to  be 
worked  out  in  a  material  and  temporal  environment ;  and 
nothing  less  than  the  assurance  that  natural  and  spiritual 
values  are  systematised  and  directed  by  Divine  Goodness 
can  satisfy  the  needs  and  meet  the  aspirations  of  the 
religious  soul.  The  human  pilgrim  striving  in  the  up- 
ward way  wins  new  courage  and  confidence  when  he 
knows,  with  a  certainty  which  casts  out  doubt,  that  the 
good  within  him  is  met  by  a  wider  Goodness,  and  the 
higher  values  cannot  suffer  ultimate  loss  or  final  defeat. 
At  the  heart  of  religion  and  morality,  it  has  been  truly 
said,  is  the  feeling  that  the  existence  and  development  of 
the  world  is  not  an  indifferent  matter,  but  is  designed  to 
realise  a  highest  Good.1 

1  Siebeck,  Ueber  Freiheit,  Entwicklung  und  Vorsehung,  1911,  p.  45. 


440         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

It  is  not,  I  think,  possible  to  found  a  solid  and  con- 
vincing argument  for  the  moral  character  of  the  World- 
Ground  on  the  observed  facts  of  nature  or  history  taken 
by  themselves.  Evils  are  everywhere  present  in  nature, 
and  sin  abounds  in  human  society ;  and  even  though  it 
were  possible  to  show  that  the  good  preponderated  by  an 
empirical  study  of  the  facts,  still  any  inference  from  this 
would  require  to  be  balanced  and  qualified  by  the  existence 
of  the  opposite.  Keeping  strictly  to  this  kind  of  empirical 
proof,  we  should  just  as  much  be  entitled  to  conclude  that, 
if  the  good  in  the  world  presupposes  an  element  of  good  in 
God,  the  existence  of  evil  presupposes  an  element  of  evil 
in  the  divine  nature.  The  inference  that  God  must  be 
perfectly  good  would  fail,  were  it  based  merely  on  the 
observed  facts  of  human  experience.  The  argument  here 
offered  is  confessedly  not  demonstrative ;  it  is  only  a 
'  probable  argument,'  but  it  is  free  from  the  defect  just 
noted.  In  substance  it  founds,  not  on  bare  facts,  but  on 
the  needs  and  demands  of  the  spiritual  consciousness. 
The  postulate  of  the  religious  spirit  is,  that  the  Supreme 
Existence  is  also  the  Supreme  Value ;  and  in  virtue  of 
this  postulate  the  self  is  able  to  develop  its  spiritual 
nature  and  to  reach  forward  to  its  fulfilment.  The 
postulate  is  necessary  to  the  meaning  of  the  religious  life, 
and  justifies  itself  by  the  way  it  works  in  religious 
experience.  On  the  strength,  then,  of  the  wants  and  the 
claims  of  the  religious  consciousness  we  affirm  the  ethical 
character  of  the  World-Ground.  If  ethical  predicates 
cannot  rightly  be  applied  to  the  Ultimate  Eeality,  then 
the  whole  spirit  and  tendency  of  the  religious  life  in  man 
is  mistaken  and  is  out  of  harmony  with  the  universe  in 
which  it  develops.  This  conclusion  we  cannot  accept, 
because  we  have  as  much  right  to  claim  that  the  universe 
should  not  be  spiritually  incoherent  as  that  it  should  not 
be  irrational.  The  argument  is  not  direct,  yet  its  weight 
should  not  be  undervalued. 

The  idea  of  God  postulated  by  the  religious  mind  has 
now  to  be  brought  into  closer  relation  with  the  meta- 


PERSONALITY  AND    RELIGIOUS    EXPERIENCE      441 

physical  conception  of  the  World-Ground.  The  second 
determination  is  more  formal,  the  first  more  concrete  and 
spiritual.  The  two  conceptions  define  reality  in  different 
aspects,  but  they  are  capable  of  being  connected.  Indeed 
it  is  apparent  that  the  two  lines  of  regress — the  meta- 
physical and  the  ethical — do  not  run  steadily  apart,  but 
converge  towards  a  common  goal.  In  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other  we  are  carried  beyond  the  world-system  in  space 
and  time  into  the  transcendent  sphere :  on  the  one  side  we 
affirm  a  transcendent  Reality,  and  on  the  other  a  tran- 
scendent Good.  In  the  case  of  the  ultimately  Eeal  we 
were  led  to  define  it  as  Will,  and  more  precisely  as  self-  , 
conscious  Will ;  while  in  the  case  of  the  ultimate  Good  we  * 
concluded  that  it  could  only  be  true  and  self-subsistent  in  ' 
a  Personal  Being.  In  both  instances  the  Ultimate  Ground 
is  conceived  by  the  help  of  analogy,  and  it  could  not  be 
otherwise  ;  but  the  analogy  is  not  used  uncritically,  and  the 
divine  transcendence  is  emphasised.  In  other  words,  there 
is  the  recognition  that  self-conscious  will  and  ethical  char- 
acter in  God  have  a  reality  and  a  significance  beyond  that 
of  their  mundane  counterparts.  God,  the  Ultimate  Ground, 
is  the  living  unity  of  existence  and  value ;  and  this  unity 
is  revealed  in  his  teleological  activity  which  embraces  the 
world  of  facts  in  a  realm  of  ends.  The  process  of  human 
evolution  shows  how  the  order  of  nature  has  been  made  to 
subserve  the  development  of  the  ideal  values.  Experience 
is  a  complex  process  which  begins  in  the  barest  individu- 
ality and  moves  slowly  upward  to  ethical  personality :  it 
is  a  development  in  the  line  of  a  growing  good.  The  pur- 
posive working  of  individuals  within  the  world-system, 
which  ministers  to  progress,  is  constantly  conditioned  by  ; 
the  all-embracing  purposive  action  of  the  Ground  upon 
which  all  centres  of  experience  depend. 

In  discussing  the  relation  of  rationality  to  value,  we 
realised  that  it  was  not  possible  to  demonstrate  that  they 
were  ultimately  identical.  Yet  a  radical  discrepancy 
between  them  was  impossible,  for  they  were  comprehended 
by,  and  functioned  as  factors  in,  the  unity  of  personal  life. 


442         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

They  were  continuously  co-operating  elements  in  the  pur- 
posive life  of  man.  In  the  present  instance  factual 
experience  has  led  us  back  to  a  transcendent  Being,  and 
value-experience  to  a  transcendent  Good,  and  we  are  like- 
wise unable  to  deduce  speculatively  the  one  idea  from  the 
other.  But  here  again  in  the  conception  of  a  Supreme 
Person  the  two  ideas  are  brought  into  a  living  and  har- 
monious unity.  God,  the  Ground  of  the  World,  is  the 
J  Supreme  Will  on  whom  the  whole  realm  of  facts  and 
values  depends,  and  who  is  himself  the  final  consummation 

•  of  reality  and  goodness.     Facts  and  values  are  harmonised 
1  in  the  personal  activity  of  man,  and  it  is  in  personality 

that  the  solution  of  the  problem  must  be  found.  In  God 
as  self-conscious  Will  reality  and  value  interpenetrate,  and 
they  are  harmoniously  interwoven  in  the  teleological 
structure  of  his  universe.  Because  the  world  is  a  divine 
Kealm  of  Ends,  facts  and  values  come  together  in  a  co- 
herent whole  of  experience.  The  issue  of  the  train  of 
thought  we  have  been  developing  is  in  accord  with  the 
principle  of  Leibniz,  that  the  teleological  character  of  the 
universe  has  its  sufficient  reason  in  the  nature  of  God,  who 
is  an  absolute  and  an  ethical  Being. 

D. — DEVELOPING  EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND. 

At  this  point  our  inquiry  might  seem  to  have  reached 
its  natural  close.  But  there  are  still  some  matters  which 
deserve  consideration.  More  especially,  and  in  view  of 
recent  discussions,  it  will  be  well  to  examine  a  little  more 
fully  a  problem  which  the  older  metaphysicians  passed 
somewhat  lightly  by.  I  mean  the  relation  of  God,  the 
«•  Ultimate  Ground,  to  experience  regarded  as  a  constantly 

•  developing  process.     It  has  been  common  enough  to  speak 
of  the  experienced  world  as  if  it  were  a  definite  and  deter- 
minate whole  given  in  its  totality.     Yet  this  familiar  form 
of  statement  does  not  accurately  express  the  truth,  and  it 
may  easily  mislead.     Existence  in  the  form  of  a  compre- 
hensive and  completed  system  is  certainly  never  given  to 


DEVELOPMENT    AND   THE   WORLD-GROUND       443 

us  in  experience,  and  reality  is  never  known  by  us  save  in 
a  broken  and  partial  fashion.  Moreover,  the  fact  is  patent 
that  experience,  as  human  history,  is  in  a  constant  process 
of  becoming,  and  its  goal  is  out  of  sight.  Knowledge  is 
steadily  growing,  but  ever  as  it  grows  new  fields  to  be 
known  are  opening  out  before  the  eyes,  and  the  settlement 
of  one  problem  means  the  emergence  of  another.  It  would 
seem,  therefore,  to  be  a  mistake  for  a  philosopher  to  take 
experience  for  a  static  whole,  forgetting  the  constant 
movement  in  which  it  is  involved.  No  ingenuity,  one 
would  think,  can  convert  what  is  in  process  into  something 
which  is  already  finished.  Nevertheless  metaphysicians, 
eager  for  finality  of  system,  have  sought  to  overcome  this 
difficulty  by  declaring  the  movement  in  time  to  be  a  mere 
appearance,  while  reality  itself  is  eternal  and  unchangeable. 
Time  is  only  a  kind  of  moving  show,  and  the  all-inclusive 
Absolute  is  beyond  time  and  change.  Students  of  the 
history  of  thought  will  remember  how  this  idea  has 
dominated  Hindu  philosophy;  and  in  modern  times  it 
reappears  in  the  systems  of  Spinoza  and  Hegel.  This  line 
of  speculation  is  governed  by  the  thought  that  the  mind, 
when  it  surveys  the  process  of  development  in  time, 
occupies  a  lower  and  quite  inadequate  standpoint.  To  see 
things  in  their  truth  it  must  see  them  sub  specie  ceternitatis ; 
and  then  the  succession  in  time  is  recognised  to  be  an 
appearance,  while  reality  is  eternally  complete  and  has  no 
before  and  after.  The  outcome  of  this  way  of  thinking  is 
to  give  us,  in  place  of  the  living,  changing,  and  developing 
universe,  what  the  late  Professor  James  has  strikingly  called 
a  '  block  universe/  A  universe  thus  rigid,  fixed,  and 
eternally  complete  in  itself  would  be  utterly  uninteresting ; 
and  it  is  not  evident  how,  regarded  from  any  point  of  view, 
it  should  wear  the  appearance  of  change.  Those  who  deny 
any  reality  to  time  forget  that,  though  our  developed  idea 
of  time  is  a  conceptual  product  elaborated  by  reference  to 
space-representation,  the  notion  of  time  grows  out  of  actual 
psychical  experiences  of  change  and  duration ;  and  these 
cannot  be  fictitious  if  the  psychical  process  itself  is  to  be 


444         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

real.  The  very  judgment  that  the  universe  is  changeless 
involves  the  fact  of  mental  change.  Moreover,  only  if  the 
time-idea  has  a  ground  in  reality  can  the  values  of  the 
historic  life  be  maintained  and  defended.  For  if  time  is 
an  illusion,  history,  which  is  meaningless  apart  from  time, 
becomes  an  unsubstantial  pageant.  A  powerful  argument 
against  the  reduction  of  reality  to  a  timelessly  perfect 
whole  can  be  drawn  from  the  facts  of  the  moral  conscious- 
ness. The  very  form  and  structure  of  the  ethical  life  imply 
the  existence  of  ends  to  be  realised,  ends  which  it  takes 
time  to  realise.  The  character  of  the  ethical  spirit  is  not 
compatible  with  the  existence  of  actual  perfection,  for 
ethics  sets  men  tasks,  a  thing  which  would  be  futile  and 
unnecessary  if  existence  were  already  perfect.1  The  realm 
of  ends  and  the  call  to  progress  are  too  intimately  bound 
up  with  the  practical  and  moral  consciousness  to  be 
eliminated  from  the  real  world :  if  this  be  so,  time  cannot 
be  an  illusion. 

If  the  fact  of  development  be  accepted  as  real,  in  what 
relation  does  the  process  stand  to  the  World-Ground  ? 
Certainly  the  Ground  must  be  the  presupposition  and 
condition  of  any  developmental  movement  within  the 
world ;  for,  apart  from  the  Ground,  the  basis  and  the 
possibility  of  development  would  not  exist.  But  the 
question  may  be  put,  whether  the  Ground  which  conditions 
development  likewise  determines  every  feature  and  fact 
within  the  process.  Does  the  movement  work  itself  out  in 
all  its  details  under  unbending  law,  so  that  the  truth  of 
seeming  contingency  is  real  necessity  ?  The  answer  will 
depend  on  whether  the  spontaneity  which  appears  to  be 
most  conspicuous  in  developed  centres  of  experience  is  a 
real  or  only  an  apparent  spontaneity.  If  we  hold,  as  I 
think  we  have  grounds  for  doing,  that  the  experience  of 
spontaneity  is  not  intelligible  on  the  assumption  that  it  is 
fictitious,  then  we  must  admit  the  possibility  of  movements 
and  new  beginnings  within  the  evolution  of  life  which  do 

1  As  Hoffding  has  remarked,  if  existence  were  complete,  harmonious,  and 
unchangeable,  Ethics  would  not  be  possible.     Phil.  Probleme,  p.  82. 


DEVELOPMENT   AND    THE   WORLD-GROUND       445 

not  proceed  inflexibly  from  pre-existing  conditions.  To 
those  who  plead  for  determinate  connexion  in  the  interests 
of  scientific  explanation,  we  can  point  out  how  serious  the 
difficulties  are  in  carrying  out  the  principle  they  advocate. 
For  the  principle  of  mechanical  connexion  rests  on  the  idea 
of  an  ultimate  equivalence  between  what  goes  before  and 
what  comes  after  in  the  developmental  process.  But  this 
conception  of  quantitative  equivalence  is  strictly  applicable 
only  to  the  interactions  of  a  mechanical  system  in  which 
the  movements  are  reversible.  You  are  dealing  here  with 
a  principle  which  does  not  work  perfectly  in  experience, 
except  where  the  situation  is  artificially  simplified,  as  in 
the  case  of  a  problem  in  pure  mechanics.  In  the  domain 
of  organic  or  spiritual  evolution  this  simplicity  is  absent, 
and  the  processes  involved  are  never  reversible.  There  is 
no  quantitative  equivalence  between  the  animal  body  and 
the  elements  out  of  which  it  is  formed ;  and  if  the  body 
develops  out  of  its  elements,  it  does  not  develop  back  into 
them.  A  true  development,  on  the  contrary,  reveals  a  real 
or  creative  synthesis,  so  that  the  product  discloses  new 
properties  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  pre-existing 
elements.1  And  when  we  pass  from  life  to  mind,  the 
constructive  or  creative  character  of  the  synthesis  is  still 
more  transparent,  and  no  explanation  through  the  scientific 
category  of  cause  and  effect  wears  the  semblance  of  proba- 
bility. Even  the  most  strenuous  upholder  of  mechanical 
causality  has  to  admit  there  are  points  where  his  method 
fails,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  transition  from  quantitative 
relations  to  qualitative  differences,  or  from  physiological 
processes  to  psychical  states.  He  takes  refuge  here  in  the 
plea  of  ignorance,  but  the  real  source  of  failure  is  the 
inadequate  and  abstract  character  of  the  mechanical 
principles  with  which  he  is  working.  Development  is 
creative,  not  the  mere  effect  of  what  has  gone  before :  to 
try  to  explain  it  as  such  an  effect  is  radically  to  misconceive 
its  nature.  "  By  this  process  at  every  stage  '  objects  of  a 

1  The  significance  of  this  fact  has  been  emphasised  by  Lotze,  Wundt, 
Professor  J.  Ward,  and  Professor  Boutroux. 


446         THE   CONCEPTION   OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

higher  order,'  as  they  have  been  happily  termed,  are 
attained ;  and  these  in  turn  may  serve  as  the  constituents 
of  a  new  synthesis." l 

It  may,  however,  be  said  that,  though  it  is  impossible  to 
explain  scientifically  the  higher  through  the  lower,  still  the 
process  may  be  merely  one  of  making  explicit  what  is  im- 
plicit from  the  first.  Or,  as  Leibniz  and  some  eighteenth 
century  writers  held,  the  developed  organism  was  '  pre- 
formed '  in  the  germ.  The  test  of  a  theory  is  its  power  to 
explain;  but  there  is  little  real  insight  gained  into  the 
process  of  development  by  this  procedure  of  reflexion  in 
doubling  existence  by  carrying  the  result  back  into  the 
beginning.  We  are  no  nearer  understanding  development 
by  saying  it  proceeds  from  what  is  *  implicit,1  so  long  as 
we  cannot  tell  what  the  '  implicit '  actually  is.  Of  course 
it  is  true  to  say  that  the  elements  in  an  animal  embryo 
must  have  a  character  and  disposition  which  ensure  that 
the  process  of  growth,  in  its  stages  and  result,  will  have 
a  certain  typical  character.  Nevertheless,  to  say  this  is 
not  to  say  that  every  detail  in  the  development  is  pre- 
determined :  and  recent  biology  favours  the  idea  that  there 
are  changes  due  to  spontaneous  variations  or  mutations. 
If  this  is  true  of  organic  evolution,  it  is  still  more  apparent 
in  historic  development,  where  the  interacting  factors  are 
self-conscious,  spiritual  beings.  To  affirm,  as  Hegel  did, 
that  the  whole  wealth  of  historic  development  is  potential 
in  the  beginnings  of  mind,  is  a  statement  which  it  would 
be  impossible  to  justify  historically.2  The  lesson  of  history 
is  rather  that  at  certain  times  men  of  genius  initiate  new 
movements  which,  though  related  to  the  past,  are  not 
explained  by  it.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that  subsequent  re- 
flexion shows  these  new  movements  were  prepared  for,  and 
so  made  possible,  by  foregoing  history  and  by  the  situation 
at  the  time.  But  there  are  various  possibilities  contained 
in  a  given  historic  situation  ;  and  even  though  the  course 
of  events  had — within  limits  no  doubt — been  different,  one 

1  Professor  J.  Ward,  The  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  105. 

2  Phil,  der  Geschichte,  ed.  1848,  p.  23. 


DEVELOPMENT   AND   THE   WORLD-GROUND       447 

would  still  have  been  able  to  show  a  continuity  with  what 
had  gone  before.  The  philosophic  historian  would  simply 
have  set  a  somewhat  modified  valuation  on  the  factors 
present  in  the  process.  The  philosophic  interpretation  of 
history  is  compatible  with  a  degree  of  spontaneity  in  the 
active  centres  of  experience. 

How  far  then,  it  may  be  asked,  can  the  development 
of  experience  be  regarded  as  controlled  by  its  Ground  ? 
Not  absolutely,  it  is  plain,  so  long  as  the  centres  of  experi- 
ence have  a  being  for  themselves  and  are  endowed  with' 
spontaneity  in  varying  degrees.  The  presence  of  these 
features  is  not  consistent  with  the  reduction  of  all  finite 
wills  to  precisely  determined  expressions  of  the  Ultimate 
Will.  A  rigid  predestinarianism  exalts  the  divine 
Sovereignty  by  making  human  freedom  an  empty  name. 
Nevertheless,  if  experience  is  to  have  an  ethical  meaning, 
it  cannot  be  ruled  by  caprice,  chance,  or  arbitrary  will. 
Freedom  in  the  many  must  be  conditioned  and  limited  by 
their  relation  to  their  common  Ground  ;  and  the  teleological 
character  of  the  whole  process  must  be  maintained,  if  its 
spiritual  value  is  to  be  conserved.  In  two  directions  the 
freedom  of  centres  of  experience  will  be  subject  to  limiting 
conditions.  Spontaneity  is  conditioned  by  the  more 
general  fact  of  dependence,  for  all  interacting  centres 
constantly  depend  on  the  Ultimate  Ground :  consequently 
spontaneity  will  always  be  exercised  within  the  bounds 
prescribed  by  this  dependence.  Again,  each  centre  of 
experience  is  likewise  limited  by  the  fact  that  it  is  only 
one  among  many,  and  the  many  constitute  a  limiting 
environment  which  further  restricts  the  possible  directions 
in  which  development  can  take  place.  No  individual 
centre  can  realise  its  freedom  except  in  such  ways  as  the 
environment  allows ;  and  when  we  speak  of  '  open  possi- 
bilities,' these  reduce  themselves  to  the  possibilities  of  the 
concrete  situation.  What  is  possible  in  a  world  of  manifold 
interacting  factors  must  mean  what  is  "  compossible,"  to 
use  a  term  coined  by  Leibniz :  in  other  words,  what  is 
possible  for  the  individual  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 


448         THE   CONCEPTION    OF   A   WORLD-GROUND 

whole  system  of  individuals.  Moreover,  since  the  body  of 
individuals  depends  for  its  being  and  interactions  on  a 
unitary  Ground,  the  Divine  Will,  contingency  within  the 
system  will  be  so  limited  that  no  developments  can  arise 
which  pass  beyond  the  divine  control.  In  the  language  of 
religion,  while  God  cannot  be  said  absolutely  to  predestinate 
everything  which  happens,  nevertheless  the  spontaneity  of 
his  creatures  entirely  falls  within  his  providential  govern- 
ment of  the  world.  In  other  words,  spontaneity  thus 
exercised  is  quite  compatible  with  the  teleological  concep- 
tion of  the  universe,  for  every  fresh  movement  must  stand 
in  some  relation  to  the  past  and  present,  and  can  only 
work  itself  out  within  the  conditions  prescribed  by  the 
general  order.  The  individual  does  not  arbitrarily  select 
its  end :  that  end  is  implied  in  its  nature,  and  that  nature 
is  determined  by  God.  In  the  case  of  self-conscious  spirits 
it  is  possible  that  they  may  will  to  fulfil  their  true  end,  or 
that  they  may  fail  to  do  so.  But  in  the  latter  event  we 
can  understand  how,  through  the  comprehensive  condition- 
ing activity  of  the  Supreme  Will,  developments  not  in  the 
line  of  the  divine  end  may  be  brought  to  nought,  or 
indirectly  made  to  subserve  the  divine  purpose.  A  divine 
order  in  the  world  is  secured  by  the  fundamental  depen- 
dence of  all  finite  beings.  Hence,  though  sin  and  failure 

;,    abound,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  we  can  trust,  that  good 

'  *    will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill. 

If  experience  is  a  living  development  into  which 
freedom  enters,  its  teleological  character  can  only  be 
maintained  throughout,  on  the  supposition  that  the  Ground 
of  the  universe  is  an  active  Being.  A  neutral  substance 
in  which  the  differences  of  spirit  and  matter  are  merged, 
and  whose  responses  are  of  the  nature  of  mechanical 
reactions,  leaves  no  room  for  a  teleological  order.  A 
Spinozistic  God,  or  natura  naturans,  excludes  purpose. 
But  the  conception  of  the  World-Ground  here  reached  is 
an  active  and  self-conscious  Will,  which  comprehends  and 
sustains  all  the  individual  centres  of  experience,  is  present 
to  all  and  responsive  to  movements  in  all.  This  con- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION        449 

ditioning  activity  of  God  is  the  pledge  of  the  persistence 
of  final  ends  in  the  world :  it  is  the  satisfying  security  for 
the  conservation  of  values  in  the  development  of  human 
experience.  Here  we  approach  the  theological  conception 
of  Providential  action  in  the  world,  the  essential  idea  of 
which  is  a  government  of  the  universe  according  to  ethical 
and  spiritual  ends.  Neither  acts  of  arbitrary  will  nor 
mechanically  necessary  modes  of  operation  enter  into  the 
idea  of  Providence.  Not  arbitrary  will,  not  action  "out 
of  his  mere  good  pleasure,"  on  the  part  of  God,  for  this  is 
inconsistent  with  the  constant  supremacy  of  the  teleological 
idea,  the  Idea  of  the  Good.  And  not  mechanical  necessity 
in  the  divine  working,  for  this  is  not  consistent  with  a 
controlling  and  guiding  ethical  purpose.  The  word  Pro- 
vidence carries  with  it  the  thought  of  a  constant  Will  to 
the  Good,  which  works  itself  out  through  the  changing 
situations  and  crises  of  the  world  and  human  history. 
And  if  the  world  have  its  Ground  in  a  self-conscious  and 
ethical  Will,  faith  in  a  Providential  order  of  things  has  a 
sufficient  justification  for  itseli 


NOTE. 
THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION. 

An  old  and  persisting  problem  of  Metaphysics  is  the  relation  of 
the  Many  to  the  One.  The  problem  may  be  regarded  from  different 
sides,  and  in  the  foregoing  chapter  I  have  approached  it  from  the  side 
which  presents  the  issue,  How  do  the  many  centres  of  experience 
come  into  connexion  or  interaction,  and  so  form  one  world  or  universe  ? 
A  general  solution  to  the  question  was  found  in  the  conception  of  a 
World-Ground  theistically  conceived.  At  the  same  time  certain  per* 
plexing  problems  about  the  nature  of  interaction  were  not  discussed, 
and  I  have  thought  it  better  not  to  pass  them  by  in  silence.  The 
student  of  philosophy  will  feel  that  some  more  explicit  pronouncement 
is  called  for  ;  and  as  the  subject  is  difficult  and  its  discussion  must  be 
somewhat  technical,  I  have  dealt  with  it  in  a  note  rather  than  in  the 
body  of  the  chapter. 

The  puzzling  thing  about  interaction  is  to  understand  how  an 
effect  can,  so  to  speak,  pass  from  A  to  B,  so  that  when  A  becomes  A' 


450       THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION 

it  is  followed  by  a  change  from  B  to  R.     Leibniz's   theory  of  the 
analytic  identity  of  subject  and  predicate  in  a  proposition  led  him  to 
treat  the  whole  process  of  change  as  immanent  in  the  subject,  arid  to 
deny  interaction  between  monads  or  experient  centres.     So  for  inter- 
action he  substitutes  correspondence.     But  it  is  difficult  to  see  how,  if 
you  retain,  as  Leibniz  does,  the  notion  of  activity  in  dependent  in- 
dividuals, you  can  avoid  admitting  interaction.     A  purely  immanent 
activity  requires  that  the  conditions  of  the  activity  lie  wholly  within 
the  active  centre  itself.     But,  in  the  case  of  a  finite  and  dependent 
substance,  its  activity  presupposes  interaction  with  an  environment 
which  elicits  the  activity  and  to  some  extent  sets  limits  to  it.     The 
phenomena  of  reaction  on  stimulus  are  a  familiar  illustration  of  the 
dependence  of  organic  life  on  conditions  beyond  itself.     But  though 
the  reality  of  interaction  be  admitted,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  the 
force  and  point  of  Lotze's  criticism  of  '  transeunt '  action,  that  is  to 
say,  the  passage  of  a  state  from  one  centre  to  another.     How  a  state  of 
an  individual  thing  A  can  detach  itself,  as  it  were,  from  A  and  become 
a  state  of  B,  passing  through  a  moment  when  it  belongs  neither  to 
A  nor  to  B,  ia  indeed  inexplicable.     The  figurative  representation  of 
'passing  over'  cannot  be  justified,  as  Lotze  has  shown  ;  and  if  things 
are  individual  and  discontinuous,  it  is  metaphysically  unintelligible 
how  a  state  of  the  one  can  ever  become  a  state  of  the  other.     The 
solution  proposed  by  Lotze  in  effect  does  away  with  the  notion  of 
Hranseunt'  action,  and  substitutes  for  it  an  immanent  action  in  the 
one  real  Being.     The  pluralism  with  which  we  start  is  merely  a 
provisional  point  of  view,  and  under  stress  of  coherent  thinking  it  is 
resolved  into  a  monism  where  individual  things  form  parts  of  one 
Reality.    Call  this  comprehensive  Reality  M,  then  interactions  mean 
compensatory  movements  within  Af,  and  they   may  be  symbolised 
thus :  M=F  (A  B  K)  =  F  (a  B  R)  =  F  (a  B  R\    So  the  immanent 
changes  balance  one  another  in  Af,  and  we  are  told  that  the  apparent 
independence  of  things  is  due  to  the  varying  offices  which  M  imposes 
on  them.1    The  result  of  this  argument  is  to  reduce  interactions  to 
compensatory  movements  within  the  life  of  the  one  Being ;  and  it  is 
not  surprising  that  in  his  later  work  Lotze  no  longer  definitely  treats 
things  as  souls  or  spiritual  centres.8     He  insists,  nevertheless,  that 
beings  who  are  self-conscious  possess  a  reality  of  their  own  which  is 
not  lost  in  the  Absolute.     But  it  is  not  made  clear  how  these  self- 
conscious  beings  can  interact  and  still  retain  their  individuality,  their 
being  for  self.   And,  in  the  light  of  the  continuity  of  psychical  develop- 
ment, can  we  consistently  limit  individual  existence  to  self-conscious 
spirits?     To  put  it  briefly,  there  is  something  contradictory  in  the 

1  Vid.  Metaphyyics,  E«g.  tr.,  vol.  i.  p.  165ff. 

3  Op.  cit.  pp.  225-229.      Cp.  Kronheim,  Lotzes  Kausaltheorie  und  Monis- 
mus,  1910,  pp.  101-103. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION        451 

idea  that  a  man's  soul  is  his  own,  while  his  body,  which  he  also  in 
some  fashion  owns,  is  a  determination  of  the  Absolute.  For  we  should 
be  forced  to  this  conclusion,  if  things  are  only  phases  of  the  one 
Reality.  Meanwhile  it  is  left  unexplained  how  the  single  real  Being 
gives  rise  to  the  illusion  of  individuality  in  the  world  and  to  the 
appearance  of  interaction  between  individuals. 

In  face  of  the  continuity  of  psychical  development,  it  is  desirable 
to  retain  the  conception  of  a  graduated  order  of  monads  or  spiritual 
substances ;  and,  if  so,  some  other  interpretation  of  interaction 
is  needed  which  will  not  swallow  up  individuals  in  the  unity  of 
their  ground.  On  this  subject  Prof.  Ward's  remarks  in  his  recent 
volume  of  Gifford  Lectures,  The  Realm  of  Ends,  are  suggestive  and 
important.1 

Prof.  Ward  does  not  follow  Lotze  in  questioning  the  existence 
of  monads,  but  deliberately  retains  and  makes  use  of  a  graduated 
order  of  spiritual  centres  in  his  theory  of  nature  and  of  organisms. 
Tracing  the  notion  of  centres  of  experience  downwards,  he  finds 
complexity  of  structure  steadily  diminish ;  and  the  limit  is  reached 
in  the  conception  of  the  '  bare  monad,'  "  whose  organism,  so  to  say, 
reduces  to  a  point,  and  its  present  to  a  moment ;  which  can  only 
react  immediately  and  to  what  is  immediately  given.  In  other  words, 
such  monads  deal  only  with  their  environment  and,  so  long,  that 
is,  as  they  remain  bare  monads,  they  severally  deal  with  it  alwaya 
in  the  same  way.  The  existence  of  an  indefinite  number  of  such 
monads  would  provide  all  the  'uniform  medium'  for  the  existence 
of  higher  monads  that  these  can  require."  These  bare  monads 
interact  immediately  in  virtue  of  a  *  sympathetic  rapport,'  and  inas- 
much as  they  have  only  external  relations  to  one  another,  form 
"the  common  organism  or  matrix  of  all  monads."  Ward  thinks 
the  bare  monads  can  perform  this  function  because  their  psychical 
life  is  reduced  to  immediacy.  We  quite  agree  with  Dr.  Ward,  that 
a  graduated  order  of  monads  correlated  in  a  system  through  a  central 
monad,  forms  the  best  working  theory  of  the  relation  of  mind  and 
body.  And  yet  there  are  undoubtedly  difficulties  in  the  way  of  a 
complete  reduction  of  matter  to  monads. 

Dr.  Ward,  using  a  phrase  of  Lotze's,  says  the  immediate  inter- 
actions of  bare  monads  is  due  to  'sympathetic  rapport.3  One  may 
accept  this  statement  and  still  find  that  it  describes  rather  than 
explains  what  takes  place.  Presumably  this  sympathetic  relationship 
is  based  on  the  action  of  the  Divine  Ground,  for  one  cannot  suppose 
the  monads  endow  themselves  with  their  elective  affinities.  At  the 
same  time,  the  monads,  however  bare,  remain  in  the  last  resort 
individual,  and  are  therefore  discontinuous.  The  bare  monad, 
however  elementary  and  immediate  its  experience,  is  nevertheless 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  255  ff. 


452       THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION 

a  distinct  centre  whose  experience  is  not  merged  in,  or  confluent 
with,  that  of  other  monads ;  and  it  is  not  intelligible  how  the 
action  of  discontinuous  elements  generates  the  appearance  of  a 
continuum  in  presentation.  Probably  Dr.  Ward  holds  that,  at  the 
extreme  downward  limit  of  monadistic  development,  where  we  have 
pure  immediacy  of  experience,  the  sharpness  of  individuality  is 
lost,  and  the  many  for  a  cognitive  subject  appear  and  function  as 
a  continuous  medium.  It  is  not,  however,  evident  how  they  should 
do  so,  for  in  the  end  they  remain  mutually  exclusive  individuals. 
But  over  and  above  this,  monadism  encounters  serious  difficulties 
when  it  has  to  explain  how  an  interacting  system  of  experient  centres 
can  give  an  adequate  interpretation  of  the  relatedness  of  things. 
Relations  in  this  sense  are  not  superimposed  on  the  terms  related : 
they  are  given  in  and  with  them,  and  the  two,  the  terms  and  the 
relations,  are  inseparably  united  in  any  concrete  situation.  Hence 
it  is  as  impracticable  to  say  that  thought  makes  the  relatedness 
of  things,  as  it  is  to  say  that  it  makes  the  things  themselves.  In 
the  case  of  relations  given  in  a  presentation-complex,  if  we  are  to 
affirm  that  centres  of  experience  are  all  that  exist,  then  these  relations 
can  only  signify  interactions  between  these  centres.  Where  relations 
mean  the  real  relatedness  of  elements  in  a  presentation,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  what  Lotze  calls  mental  "  acts  of  reference,"  are  they 
capable  of  being  construed  as  interactions  between  monads?  If  a 
stands  to  b  in  the  fixed  relation  R,  then  the  total  in  presentation  is 
symbolised  by  the  complex  a  R  b.  But  if  R  merely  denotes  the 
qualification  of  a  and  6  as  a'  and  6',  how  can  a  subject  S,  which 
ex  hypothesi  is  only  supposed  to  apprehend  a  and  a'  and  b  and  &',  form 
the  idea  of  the  constant  relation  R  between  them  ?  For  S  can  only 
apprehend  an  experience,  in  other  words,  states  of  a  and  states  of  6, 
and  neither  in  a  nor  6  is  there  a  state  which  corresponds  to  a  R  b. 
How  is  S  enabled  to  posit  the  constant  relation  R  in  distinction 
from  a  causal  series  of  states  in  a  and  6?  One  would  reply  that 
to  make  this  possible  S  must  apprehend  more  than  experiences  in 
a  and  6,  in  fact  must  apprehend  a  and  6  as  elements  in  a  continuum 
involving  the  relation  -B  between  them.  For  it  is  the  togetherness 
of  a  and  b  which  is  expressed  by  R,  and  this  togetherness  is  not 
represented  in  the  qualifications  of  a  and  6  taken  separately.  It 
is  perfectly  true,  as  Lotze  has  shown,  that  the  relations  cannot  be 
merely  external  to  the  terms,  nor  the  terms  indifferent  to  the 
relations.  But  it  is  also  true  that,  if  the  terms  have  a  reality  in 
themselves,  then  with  the  reality  of  the  terms  there  is  bound  up 
the  fact  of  their  relatedness.  And  this  relatedness  is  not  explained 
by  the  states  or  inner  qualifications  of  the  terms  themselves.  If 
this  argument  be  sound  there  is  an  aspect  of  experience  which 
monadism  does  not  adequately  interpret. 

There  is  another  consideration  which  so  far  strengthens  the  case 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION        453 

against  the  reduction  of  matter  to  monads.  Developed  centres  of 
experience  do  not  interact  directly,  but  always  through  a  common 
medium.  One  mind  cannot  immediately  know  another :  inter- 
subjective  intercourse  is  made  possible  by  outward  signs  and  symbols, 
by  the  gesture,  the  spoken  word,  and  the  printed  page.  At  a  lower 
level,  organisms  do  not  immediately  share  one  another's  life,  but 
they  are  constantly  affecting  each  other  through  the  environment 
which  they  share  in  common.  Neither  as  consciousness  nor  as  life  do 
we  find  one  centre  of  experience  becoming  the  direct  and  immediate 
object  to  another  centre  of  experience.  It  is  therefore,  to  say  the 
least,  questionable  whether  we  can  retain  the  notion  of  individuality, 
if  we  are  to  postulate  monads  of  so  low  a  grade  that  they  interact 
immediately.  For  what  is  there  then  to  distinguish  one  monad  from 
another  ?  It  seems  more  reasonable  to  suppose  that,  though  the  bare 
monad  is  the  limit  of  individuality,  it  is  not  the  limit  of  being; 
that  beyond  the  lowest  centres  of  experience  extends  a  continuous 
medium  out  of  which  they  are  differentiated  and  in  which  they 
interact.  If  we  distinguish  a  real  and  an  ideal  side  in  the  system 
of  monads,  the  ideal  side  would  denote  the  development  of  experience 
in  an  experient  centre.  On  the  real  side  all  monads  would  share, 
through  its  presence  in  each  of  them,  in  one  real  and  continuous 
being:  this  being  would  be  the  active  medium  of  responsive 
movements  between  its  differentiations,  and  the  constant  basis 
for  ideal  development  in  individuals.  This  ideal  development, 
which  involves  the  principle  of  creative  synthesis,  would  bring 
about  the  highest  degree  of  individuality  or  distinctiveness  in 
centres  of  experience.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  ideal  side 
of  the  monads  was  at  its  lowest,  the  approach  to  direct  and 
immediate  interaction  would  be  closest,  though  immediacy  could 
not  be  reached  so  long  as  there  were  discontinuous  centres  of 
experience.  With  the  increasing  complexity  of  organic  evolution, 
under  a  dominant  monad  individuals  of  a  higher  grade  would  emerge, 
whose  interaction  would  be  mediated  by  the  lower  monads  in  them 
and  by  the  common  medium  which  was  continuously  present  in 
the  lower  monads. 

It  will  probably  be  objected  to  the  foregoing  theory,  that  it  sets 
being  over  against  experience,  and  lands  us  in  a  dualism  which  is 
even  more  intractable  than  the  problem  of  interaction  between 
individuals.  This  objection,  I  venture  to  say,  rests  on  a  misconcep- 
tion, for  there  is  no  intention  to  assert  an  ultimate  difference  in  kind 
between  individual  experients  and  the  medium  in  which  they 
interact.  This  common  being  simply  denotes  the  limit  at  which 
experience  passes  from  the  discontinuous  into  something  which  is 
continuous.  On  this  point  let  me  quote  Professor  Stout:  "On  the 
other  hand,  we  must  set  aside  any  view  which  regards  this  realm  of 
independent  existence  as  disparate  in  kind  or  as  discontinuous  in 


454       THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION 

existence  with  the  presentations  through  which  we,  as  thinking 
beings,  are  conversant  with  it."  l  In  other  words,  the  reality  which 
exists  beyond  presentation  cannot  be  heterogeneous  from  that  which 
exists  in  presentation.  The  ideal  and  the  real,  the  discontinuous  and 
the  continuous,  are  two  contrasted  sides  of  existence,  and  their 
necessary  relation  to  each  other  would  be  unintelligible  if  they 
differed  toto  ccelo.  The  transition  from  the  continuous  to  the  discon- 
tinuous presupposes  no  difference  in  kind.  Continuous  being  so 
conceived,  resembles  the  original  'stuff'  of  the  world  which  Plato 
tentatively  described  in  the  Timmus,  and  called  "  the  receptacle  and 
as  it  were  the  nurse  of  all  becoming."2  It  is  something  very 
different  from  the  matter  of  the  materialist.  From  the  latter  it  is 
impossible  on  any  showing  to  derive  mind ;  but  the  common 
medium  which  we  postulate  is  mind  in  the  making,  and  forms 
the  basis  of  ideal  development.  On  the  theory  here  advocated 
the  monads  and  the  medium  form  a  system,  neither  existing  apart 
from  the  other,  and  both  involved  in  the  process  of  experience 
as  its  ideal  and  real  sides.  This  being  which  is  present  in  all 
monads  is  manifested  in  the  process  of  becoming  experienced :  in 
this  process  it  reveals  its  nature.  Its  existence  explains  the  con- 
tinuous relatedness  of  things  in  the  complex  of  presentation,  which 
for  the  developed  mind  assumes  the  form  of  a  spatially  extended 
whole.8 

Those  who  have  followed  the  argument  may  put  to  us  a  relevant 
question  at  this  point.  They  will  perhaps  ask :  If  the  common 
medium  you  postulate  is  not  itself  psychical  experience,  nor  a 
material  entity,  what  kind  of  reality  belongs  to  it?  Does  it  exist 
independently  of  all  experience?  That  it  is  not  constituted  by 
mundane  experience  is  evident,  for  it  forms  the  basis  out  of  which 
finite  centres  of  experience  are  differentiated  and  developed.  Nor 
can  it  be  simply  identified  with  the  Divine  Experience,  for  this 
would  be  something  conscious  and  individual,  which  ex  hypothesi 
the  medium  is  not.  On  the  other  hand,  the  universal  medium 
cannot  be  an  independent  reality  which  is  somehow  interpolated 


1  Fid.  his  article  in  Mind,  N.S.,  No.  77,  p.  8.  It  is  owing  to  remarks 
of  Dr.  Stout's,  taken  in  connexion  with  difficulties  raised  by  interaction, 
that  the  present  writer  has  realised  the  need  of  reconsidering  the  theory  of 
monads.  Dr.  Stout  has  thrown  out  some  pregnant  suggestions  on  this 
subject,  but  he  has  not  given  any  full  and  authoritative  exposition  of  his 
views.  I  am  not  certain  how  far  he  would  agree  with  the  opinions  put 
forward  in  this  note. 

a  Tim.  49  A  :  irdffrjs  elvai  •yep&rews  {rjroSoxyv  airr6,  olov  nd-^VTjv. 

*  Perhaps  it  is  not  hazardous  to  hint  that  this  basal  community  in  all 
psychical  centres  may  help  to  explain  obscure  mental  phenomena  like 
thought-suggestion  and  thought-transference. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION        455 

between  the  human  spirit  and  the  Divine,  because  it  shares  to  the 
full  the  dependence  of  the  individuals  that  interact  within  it  on  the 
World-Ground.  We  must  rather  think  of  it  as  something  brought 
into  being  and  constantly  sustained  by  the  Supreme  Will,  and 
having  no  reality  apart  from  that  Will.  As  such  it  is,  in  its  totality, 
embraced  by  the  Divine  Experience,  while  its  manifestation  to 
human  experience  is  partial  and  incomplete.  The  truth  of  this 
theory  posits  a  creative  activity  on  the  part  of  the  transcendent  Will, 
of  which  man's  mundane  activity  can  furnish  no  representation. 
But  though  analogy  fails  us  here,  the  relation  can  be  truthfully 
thought  under  the  notion  of  constant  dependence. 

The  relation  of  the  conception  here  outlined  to  the  theory  of 
Lotze  ought  to  be  noted.  It  is  common  to  both  theories  that  inter- 
action is  explained  through  the  presence  of  one  being  in  all  inter- 
acting centres.  But  with  Lotze  this  means  the  absorption  of  all 
centres  of  being  in  the  one  Absolute  Being,  and  the  resolution  of 
pluralism  into  monism.  In  the  present  case  it  is  expressly  denied 
that  the  common  medium  in  which  experient  centres  exist  and 
interact  is  the  Absolute,  nor  is  that  medium  identified  with  the 
Ground  of  the  World.  The  being  in  which  the  monads  subsist  is 
neither  their  source  nor  their  ultimate  reason,  and  entirely  shares 
the  derivative  character  of  the  mundane  system  which  it  goes  to 
constitute.  Individuals  and  the  medium  in  which  they  interact 
form  a  dependent  system,  the  ground  of  which  lies  beyond  the  system 
itself.  That  ground  is  an  all- comprehending  Divine  Will,  of  which 
the  being  of  the  world  is  the  expression. 

It  would  be  consistent  with  a  theistic  philosophy  of  religion  to 
say  that  all  centres  of  experience  are  brought  into  a  sympathetic 
relation,  so  that  they  interact  freely  with  one  another,  by  the  agency 
of  the  Divine  Will.  And  the  operation  of  the  Divine  Will  might  be 
conceived  after  the  analogy  of  the  activity  of  the  soul  in  an  organism. 
In  this  way  the  dependence  of  all  individuals  on  God  would  be 
ensured,  although,  as  we  see  in  Lotze,  the  tendency  of  thought,  intent 
on  unification,  would  be  to  make  the  divine  activity  a  purely 
immanent  process,  and  to  identify  God  with  the  world-system.  But 
though  this  tendency  is  intelligible,  it  is  not,  I  think,  in  the  circum- 
stances inevitable,  and  it  would  still  be  open  to  insist  on  the  trans- 
cendent aspect  of  the  World-Ground.  So  long  as  this  is  made  clear, 
and  finite  individuals  are  not  reduced  to  mere  appearances  of  the 
Absolute  Being,  it  cannot  be  said  that  metaphysical  theory  conflicts 
with  the  spiritual  interests  of  the  religious  consciousness.  The 
objections  to  this  view  are  less  due  to  a  religious  than  to  a  speculative 
motive.  For  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  { sympathetic  rapport 'is 
brought  about  on  these  terms.  But  the  main  objection  to  the  theory 
is,  what  I  may  call  the  realistic  implications  of  experience  itself, 
The  purely  monadistic  structure  of  reality  does  not  explain  the 


456       THE  PROBLEM  OF  INTERACTION 

continuity  of  being,  nor  can  it  adequately  interpret  the  inherent 
relatedness  of  things.  So  far,  at  least,  one  must  admit  the  force  of 
the  polemic  of  the  New  Realists  against  the  purely  idealistic  view  of 
relations.  And  though  we  realise  that  no  metaphysical  theory  will 
ever  be  final  and  complete,  we  are  bound  to  prefer  the  theory  which 
seems  most  consistent  with  the  facts. 


CHAPTER  XIL 
GOD:  HIS  KELATIONS  AND  ATTEIBUTES. 

A. — HISTOEIC  CONCEPTIONS  OF  GOD. 

IN  the  previous  chapter  we  have  tried  to  show  that  a 
World -Ground,  theistically  conceived,  is  the  best  solution 
of  the  problems  presented  by  the  external  universe  and 
the  values  of  the  spiritual  life.  But  the  idea  of  a 
Supreme  Will  or  Ground  of  the  world,  to  which  we  have 
been  led,  calls  for  some  further  explanation — explanation 
more  especially  of  the  relation  in  which  this  Will  stands 
to  the  world  and  to  finite  minds.  In  view  of  current 
theories  this  seems  desirable,  and  the  present  chapter 
attempts  to  deal  with  the  subject. 

It  will  be  convenient  to  begin  our  endeavour  to  define 
more  fully  the  relations  of  God  to  the  cosmos  by  examin- 
ing certain  conceptions  of  God  which  stand  out  in  the 
historic  development  of  the  religious  consciousness.  The 
development  of  religion,  regarded  from  one  point  of  view,  J 
is  a  development  in  the  representations  of  God ;  and  these 
varying  forms  of  conceiving  the  Divine  Object  point  to 
needs  of  which  the  growing  religious  spirit  becomes 
conscious.  Of  these  representations  three  broad  types  are 
selected,  and  by  examining  them  we  shall  make  clear  to 
ourselves  the  lines  on  which  an  answer  to  our  problem  is 
to  be  found.  The  nature  of  the  religious  consciousness  is 
exhibited  most  fully  in  its  developed  forms ;  and  the  types 
to  which  I  refer  belong  to  the  higher  stages  of  religion, 
when  the  relation  of  God  to  the  world  has  become  an  object 
of  thought.  They  are  Deism,  Pantheism,  and  Theism. 

467 


458  RELATIONS   AND   ATTRIBUTES   OF   GOD 

(a)  Deism. 

The  Deistic  conception  of  God  has  been  formed  under 
the  influence  of  the  human  analogy.  As  man  is  con- 
trasted with  his  work,  so  is  Deity  here  set  over  against 
his  world.  God  is  not  immanent  in  mundane  things,  nor 
does  he  continuously  sustain  them :  he  rather  exists 
outside  or  alongside  them.  This  apartness  of  God  from 
his  world  is  characteristic  of  the  Deistic  conception ;  he  is, 
indeed,  supposed  to  create  the  world,  but  does  not  stand 
to  nature  and  man  in  any  intimate  and  living  relation. 

•  Revelation  is  not  thought  to  be  a  process  at  work  within 
the  individual  and  the  movement  of  history.  It  is  rather 
restricted  to  a  single  act,  the  act  by  which  God  endowed 
man  with  his  natural  reason,  which  is  the  light  of  natural 

\religion  and  its  norm.  This  way  of  thinking  was  fore- 
shadowed by  Aristotle  in  the  well-known  theory  of  Deity 
outlined  in  Book  XII.  of  his  Metaphysics.  God,  he  tells 
us,  is  pure  form,  for  ever  separated  from  material  and 
mutable  things.  He  is  the  pure  activity  of  mind,  a 
thinking  on  thought ;  and  moves  his  world  from  without 
only  as  the  object  of  desire.  In  modern  times  it  was  the 
Deistic  writers  of  the  seventeenth  and  the  eighteenth 
century,  with  their  idea  of  a  '  natural  religion  '  which  was 
the  embodiment  of  the  natural  human  reason,  who  gave 
currency  to  what  is  commonly  called  Deism.  Deism 
stood  for  a  rationalising  rather  than  a  spiritual  impulse, 
and  its  adherents  were  concerned  to  set  forth  an  idea  of 
V  God  which  would  commend  itself  to  the  abstract  under- 
standing, not  to  interpret  loyally  the  inner  needs  and 
practical  desires  of  the  religious  soul.  Hence  this  move- 
ment has  never  stood  in  any  close  relation  to  the  spiritual 
life.  At  a  later  date  we  find  a  survival  of  the  Deistic 
tendency  in  J.  S.  Mill's  theory  of  a  God  who  is  limited  in 
various  ways,  and  is  not  omnipotent.  On  the  whole,  how- 
ever, Deism  had  ceased  to  be  a  living  force  before  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  fresh  currents  in 
philosophy  and  literature  quickened  the  reaction  against 


DEISM  459 

it.  In  Germany  the  sympathetic  study  of  Spinoza,  intro- 
duced by  Lessing,  worked  as  a  new  leaven,  and  Goethe 
and  others  who  had  learned  in  this  school  gave  voice  to 
the  disrepute  into  which  the  notion  of  an  extra-mundane 
God  had  fallen : — 

"Was  war'  ein  Gott,  der  nur  von  aussen  stiesse, 
Ini  Kreis  das  All  am  Finger  laufen  liesse." 

In  the  same  spirit  Carlyle  spoke  scornfully  in  his  Sartor 
Resartus  of  "  an  absentee  God,  sitting  idle,  ever  since  the 
first  Sabbath,  at  the  outside  of  his  universe,  and  seeing  it 
go."  l  In  truth,  the  whole  movement  of  thought,  from  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  onwards,  was  hostile 
to  the  narrow  rationalism  which  was  the  atmosphere  in 
which  Deism  flourished.  The  rise  and  growth  of  the  idea 
of  evolution  made  common  a  way  of  regarding  the  world 
and  life  which  was  unfavourable  to  the  Deistic  conception 
of  God.  As  men  became  familiar  with  the  notion  of  a 
development  going  on  in  all  things,  they  sought  for 
evidence  of  Deity  within  the  world-process  rather  than 
without  it.  At  the  present  day  thinkers  are  more  keenly 
alive  to  the  defects  of  Deism,  than  disposed  to  ask 
whether,  after  all,  it  might  not  contain  some  elements  of 
truth.  Yet  I  think  it  can  hardly  be  denied  that  Deism, 
despite  its  obvious  shortcomings,  emphasised  certain  facts 
about  God  which  deserve  to  be  kept  in  mind.  The  Deist 
at  all  events  made  the  word  God  stand  for  something 
definite,  not  for  a  vague  'stream  of  tendency'  nor  an 
elusive  impersonal  reason.  God  was  not  a  shadowy 
Absolute,  but  a  determinate  Being  in  determinate  relations 
to  the  world  and  man ;  and  if  this  sober  rationalism  saw 
the  world  under  a  cold  and  hard  light,  failing  to  realise 
the  depth  and  mystery  of  God  and  spiritual  things,  it  still 
recognised  that  the  object  of  worship  was  a  personal 
Being  who  deserved  the  reverence  of  persons.  Finally, 
Deism  in  maintaining  that  God  was  transcendent,  therefore 
not  to  be  confused  with  things  or  human  spirits,  was  setting 

1  Op.  cit.y  Bk.  ii.  cap.  vii. 


460     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOB 

forth  a  sound  religious  principle  which  has  too  often  been 
obscured.  For  undoubtedly  the  religious  mind  thinks 
God  is  above  the  world,  and  not  dependent  upon  it.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  defects  of  Deism  are  conspicuous,  and 
they  have  often  been  emphasised.  It  insists  on  the  apart- 
ness of  God  so  as  to  isolate  him  from  the  world,  and 
invests  the  latter  with  a  kind  of  false  independence.  In 
other  words,  it  ignores  the  continuous  and  intimate  depend- 
ence of  the  world  on  God,  and  his  activity  within  it  which 
is  implied  in  the  notion  of  the  divine  immanence.  In  a 
similar  way  it  fails  to  recognise  that  inner  relationship  of 
human  spirits  to  the  Divine  Spirit  which  is  involved  in  the 
nature  and  working  of  religion.  "The  Spirit  beareth 
witness  with  our  spirits,"  says  St.  Paul ;  but  the  Deist  is 
content  to  believe  that  man,  once  furnished  with  the  light 
of  reason,  went  his  own  way  in  the  world.  Hence  Deism 
provides  no  sufficient  explanation  of  the  facts  of  religious 
communion  and  of  the  revelation  of  God  to  and  in  human 
souls.  Its  tendency  was  to  a  purely  rational  interpreta- 
tion of  religion,  and  this  is  psychologically  false  and 
spiritually  inadequate.  So  one  can  understand  how  Deism 
is  an  attempt  to  rationalise  religion  rather  than  a  genuine 
utterance  of  the  religious  spirit.  It  is,  that  is  to  say, 
a  critical  rather  than  a  spiritual  movement. 

(b)  Pantheism. 

Pantheism  is  a  phase  of  religious  thought  exactly 
opposite  to  Deism,  and  historically  it  is  more  important. 
The  pantheistic  tendency  emerges  in  very  different  systems 
of  culture,  appearing  and  reappearing,  and  it  has  a 
fascination  for  certain  orders  of  religious  mind.  In  the 
far  East,  in  ancient  Egypt  and  in  Greece,  among  the 
Western  peoples  of  mediaeval  and  of  modern  times, 
pantheistic  systems  have  exercised  a  commanding  influence. 
They  have  impressed  the  intellect  of  men,  and  have 
yielded  a  kind  of  satisfaction  to  the  human  heart.  Much 
more  than  Deism,  Pantheism  appeals  to  real  instincts  of 


PANTHEISM  461 

the  religious  consciousness.  Religion  has  its  mystical 
side ;  and  Mysticism  often  takes  the  form  of  aspiration 
after  a  union  with  God  which  means  an  absorption  into 
the  Divine.  And  when  such  Mysticism  seeks  to  give  an 
intellectual  justification  of  itself,  it  inclines  to  develop 
some  form  of  pantheistic  theory.  Moreover,  from  the 
intellectual  point  of  view,  the  pantheist  may  plead  that 
his  theory  gives  effect  to  the  scientific  desire  for  unity. 
Scientific  thinking  strives  to  show  that  behind  the  variety 
of  phenomena  is  a  universal  law,  a  principle  which  com- 
prehends them  and  expresses  itself  through  them :  so  the 
seeming  many  in  the  end  are  one.  And  it  may  be  said 
we  are  only  giving  a  more  extended  application  to  the 
same  movement  of  mind,  when  we  see  in  all  the  variety  of 
the  universe  one  single  and  all-embracing  Being.  Thus 
it  is  that  Pantheism  claims  to  be  the  legitimate  goal  and 
resting-place  of  thought. 

When  we  speak  of  Pantheism,  however,  it  is  needful 
to  remember  we  are  dealing  with  a  somewhat  elusive 
word,  a  word  whose  spiritual  significance  is  not  well- 
defined.  Like  idealism,  the  term  denotes  a  movement  of 
thought  which  has  passed  into  distinct  forms  and  phases, 
and  the  religious  meaning  of  these  is  by  no  means  identical. 
There  is  materialistic  Pantheism  and  there  is  idealistic 
Pantheism ;  some  pantheistic  systems  set  forth  God  as  self- 
conscious,  others  as  unconscious  ;  some  proclaim  the  world 
is  real,  while  others  declare  it  is  an  illusion.  Consequently 
it  would  be  impossible  to  say  that  the  general  notion  of 
Pantheism  conveys  a  clear  and  consistent  doctrine,  whose 
spiritual  and  ethical  value  can  be  definitely  determined. 
Some  pantheistic  writers,  in  virtue  of  their  tone  and  temper 
of  mind,  approximate  to  Christian  modes  of  thought  and 
expression,  while  some  are  distinctly  anti-religious. 
Nevertheless,  where  Pantheism  assumes  a  genuinely 
religious  colouring,  it  will  be  found  that  it  fails  to  develop 
rigorously  the  logical  consequences  of  its  own  premisses. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  influence  of  the  study 
of  Spinoza  in  giving  strength  to  the  reaction  against 


462     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

Deistic  views  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Spinoza's  system,  though  it  did  not  win  general  acceptance, 
stimulated  thinkers  and  poets  to  see  the  immanence  of 
God  in  nature  and  in  man.  This  new  sympathy  between 
nature  and  the  human  mind  seemed  to  suggest  an  inner 
affinity,  the  presence  in  both  of  '  something  far  more 
deeply  interfused,' 

"A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

So  far  as  Spinoza  himself  was  concerned,  the  defects  of 
his  theory  were  too  transparent.  It  absorbed  all  finite 
things  and  persons  in  the  gulf  of  substance,  without  ex- 
plaining how  the  differences  of  the  experienced  world 
could  have  issued  from  that  abstract  and  colourless 
identity.  A  conception  of  God,  it  was  felt,  which  would 
bear  philosophic  criticism  and  successfully  replace  the 
limited  Deity  of  Deism,  must  not  entail  a  sheer  identifica- 
tion of  God  with  the  spatial  universe,  nor,  on  the  other 
hand,  deny  that  the  world  possessed  a  degree  of  reality. 
God  must  not  be  thought  to  be  present  with  the  same 
fulness  in  a  stone  as  in  a  human  soul,  and  the  multiplicity 
of  finite  things  should  have  their  due  place  and  function  in 
the  Whole.  With  a  proper  regard  for  these  considerations, 
pantheistic  idealism  was  developed  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  in  consequence  has  assumed  a  more  subtle 
and  plausible  form  than  older  types  of  pantheistic  theory. 
I  am  referring  more  particularly  to  the  Hegelian  type  of 
idealism,  which  in  varying  forms  has  proved  an  important 
influence  during  the  earlier  and  latter  parts  of  last  century. 
Some  writers  of  this  school  are  anxious  to  distinguish  their 
mode  of  conceiving  the  universe  from  what  they  call 
Pantheism,  and  a  criticism  of  Pantheism  often  figures  in 
their  writings.  Thus  a  contemporary  thinker  declares 
that  Constructive  Idealism,  as  he  elects  to  call  it,  differs 
from  Pantheism  by  not  conceiving  the  Divine  as  equally 
manifested  in  nature  and  in  mind,  and  in  not  robbing  the 


PANTHEISM  463 

finite  of  reality.1  Another  thinker,  writing  from  a 
somewhat  different  standpoint  but  still  advocating 
pantheistic  idealism,  tries  to  assign  a  relative  independence 
to  finite  spirits  by  conceiving  their  relation  to  the 
Divine  Spirit  after  the  analogy  of  the  individual  mind 
and  its  particular  states.2  Both  thinkers,  I  take  it,  would 
admit  transcendence  in  the  sense  that  God  is  always  more 
than  nature  and  finite  minds.  But  without  embarking  on 
detailed  criticism,  I  believe  one  or  two  general  considera- 
tions will  make  it  clear  that  these  theories  involve  prin- 
ciples which  expose  them  to  the  same  objections  which 
can  be  urged  against  every  form  of  Pantheism. 

Modern  forms  of  monistic  idealism  which  identify 
God  with  the  Absolute,  despite  the  stress  they  lay  on  the 
fact  of  differentiation  in  the  Absolute,  are  none  the  less 
committed  to  the  principle  that  the  being  of  God  is  all- 
inclusive.  Nothing  exists  or  can  exist  outside  this  single 
real  Being.  The  truth  of  all  finite  spirits  is  their  exist- 
ence as  elements  in  or  expressions  of  the  Absolute  Mind 
or  Will.  They  are  merely  the  differences  which  the 
Absolute  takes  up  into  itself,  that  it  may  be  a  complete 
and  individual  Whole.  And  every  system  which  asserts 
God  to  be  the  Absolute  in  this  all-inclusive  fashion  must 
be  reckoned  pantheistic,  even  although  those  who  accept 
the  system  disclaim  the  title.  For  the  reality  of  every- 
thing is  God  in  some  form  or  phase  of  his  self-manifesta- 
tion :  not  even  human  souls  have  a  being-for-self  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word. 

There  is  something  vaguely  grand  and  impressive  in 
the  pantheistic  idea :  it  will  always  possess  an  attraction 
for  certain  orders  of  mind,  and  it  is  the  logical  issue  of  a 

1  Watson,  The  Philosophical  Basis  of  Religion,  pp.  444-446.     Spinoza 
is  no  doubt  thought  to  rob  the  finite  of  reality,  yet  Professor  Watson  for 
himself  asserts  that  what  we  call  finite  is  a  particular  phase  of  the  Whole 
viewed  in  its  isolation  (p.  438).     Spinoza  says  the  apparent  independence 
of  things  is  due  to  Imaginatio  ;  Professor  Watson  affirms  it  is  owing  to 
isolation  or  abstraction.     For  the   Hegelian  what  is  abstract  is  to  that 
extent  untrue,  so  the  two  conceptions  are  really  not  so  far  apart. 

2  Paulsen,  Einleitung  in  die  Philosopliie,  p.  250. 


464     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

certain  trend  of  thought.  Yet  the  facts  of  experience  do 
not  cohere  well  with  the  idea  that  God  is  all,  and  those 
who  think  so  must  be  content  to  ignore  or  to  forget  much. 
The  difficulties  which  beset  the  conception,  if  they  are  not 
exclusively  found  in  the  sphere  of  human  consciousness, 
are  at  least  most  patent  and  urgent  there;  and  we  will 
confine  ourselves  chiefly  to  them.  First  of  all,  it  baffles 
us  entirely  to  think  how  the  finite  mind  can,  at  one  and 
the  same  time,  be  the  individual's  mind  and  also  a  part  of 
the  Divine  Mind.  It  is  the  essence  of  the  conscious 
spirit  to  be  for  self,  to  refer  to  itself,  and  to  distinguish 
itself  from  all  other  things.  Finite  minds,  however  much 
they  depend  on  one  another  for  their  self-development, 
yet  as  consciousnesses  do  not  interpenetrate  or  merge  into 
one  another.  Nor  does  the  idea  of  the  "  social  conscious- 
ness "  furnish  any  analogy  which  would  help  us  to  under- 
stand the  inclusion  of  the  human  in  the  Divine  Mind. 
For  the  "  social  consciousness "  denotes  ideas,  traditions, 
tendencies,  and  aspirations  shared  by  many  minds  in 
common :  it  signifies  a  content  common  to  many  minds, 
but  is  in  no  way  a  self-consciousness  such  as  we  suppose 
God  must  be. 

Those  who  affirm  the  self-consciousness  of  God  and  of 
man,  and  also  affirm  the  inclusion  of  the  latter  in  the 
former,  are  really  saddled  with  a  hopeless  problem.  They 
have  to  explain  how  this  limited,  imperfect  and  incomplete 
experience  which  I  call  my  own,  is  really  owned  by  God, 
and  forms  part  of  his  perfect  and  complete  experience.  It 
is  not  admissible  to  look  now  at  the  human  and  then  at 
the  divine,  and  to  suggest  that  by  the  logic  of  concrete 
identity  the  two  must  be  one.  The  crux  of  the  problem 
is  to  explain  how  my  specific  consciousness  at  this  given 
moment  can,  without  ceasing  to  be  mine,  be  also  God's 
consciousness.  The  suggested  analogy  of  the  self  and  its 
states  sheds  no  light  on  the  subject.  For  the  particular 
state  of  consciousness  is  not  a  state  of  consciousness  in  its 
own  right,  but  only  in  virtue  of  its  relation  to  the  central 
self  to  which  it  belongs :  we  are,  in  fact,  only  dealing  with 


PANTHEISM  465 

one  consciousness,  not  with  the  relation  of  one  consciousness 
to  another.  We  shall  be  told,  perhaps,  that  a  human 
experience  is  expanded  and  transformed  when  regarded  as 
part  of  God's  experience.  Yet  this  suggestion  makes  it 
not  one  whit  clearer  how  the  specific  experience  which 
means  this  to  me  should  also  mean  something  quite  different 
to  God.  The  pain  which  I  feel  cannot  at  one  and  the  same 
time  be  my  pain  and  part  of  God's  harmonious  experience. 
And  what  is  true  of  experience  in  the  form  of  thought  and 
feeling  likewise  holds  good  of  experience  as  will.  The  con- 
sciousness of  freedom  and  personal  autonomy,  which  goes 
with  the  exercise  of  the  personal  will,  cannot  be  justified 
if  my  will  is  really  the  expression  of  the  Divine  Will  If 
I  am,  in  my  acts  of  willing,  the  mere  manifestation  of  the 
Divine  Will,  it  is  hopelessly  inconsistent  to  say  my  acts 
are  the  free  and  responsible  expression  of  my  own  will. 
Harmony  with  the  will  of  God  does  not  mean  absorption 
into  it,  but  free  co-operation  with  it : — 

"Our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  Thine." 

In  other  words,  identification  with  the  Divine  Will  on 
man's  part  really  signifies  an  act  of  faith  and  freedom  by 
which  he  makes  the  Divine  End  his  own  end :  it  is  not 
the  recognition  of  the  actual  identity  of  his  will  with  God's 
will.  The  facts  of  moral  and  spiritual  experience  are 
really  unintelligible  on  the  pantheistic  theory  that  there  is 
only  one  will  in  the  universe,  of  which  all  things,  material 
and  human,  are  the  utterance.  While  religion  teaches 
that  true  living  is  conformity  to  the  will  of  God,  it  always 
presupposes  in  individuals  the  freedom  to  obey  or  to  fail  to 
obey.  Pantheism,  on  the  contrary,  if  it  is  consistent,  must 
be  fatalistic  and  can  admit  neither  contingency  nor  human 
initiative  within  the  rigid  order  of  the  universe. 

But  the  vogue  of  Pantheism  in  the  history  of  religion 
and  philosophy  would  be  inexplicable  if  it  were  a  mere 
tissue  of  errors  ;  in  some  ways  it  must  respond,  or  appear 
to  respond,  to  human  needs.  I  have  already  suggested 
that  it  seems  to  meet  man's  desire  for  unity  and  complete- 


466     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

ness  in  his  conception  of  the  world.  The  vision  of  the 
universe  as  a  single  and  all-pervading  system  appears  to 
be  the  true  goal  of  that  departmental  knowledge  which 
does  not  satisfy,  and  ever  points  beyond  itself.  And  if 
the  pantheist  proclaims  that  the  truth  of  finite  things  is 
God,  the  theist  will  at  least  agree  that,  though  mundane 
objects  exist,  they  are  not  real  in  the  way  that  God  is  real. 
Again,  in  emphasising  the  immanence  of  God,  Pantheism 
fulfils  a  want  of  the  religious  spirit,  which  claims  that 
Deity  is  everywhere  present  in  the  world,  and  that  no 
region  of  experience  lies  outside  the  divine  care  and  keep- 
ing. Spiritual  religion  certainly  affirms  that  all  things  are 
in  God  in  the  sense  that  he  comprehends,  sustains,  and 
works  through  all.  Pantheism,  however,  converts  this 
truth  into  an  error  by  resolving  the  activity  of  God  in  the 
world  and  the  human  soul  into  an  identity  of  nature  and 
substance. 

(c)  Theism. 

Deism  and  Pantheism,  as  we  have  seen,  contain 
elements  of  truth,  though  the  truth  is  mingled  with  error. 
The  former  rightly  asserts  the  transcendence  of  God,  and 
the  latter  his  immanence.  Theism  proclaims  that  God 
is  both  immanent  and  transcendent,  thus  seeking  to  unite 
what  is  true  in  Deism  and  in  Pantheism.  In  contrast  to 
these  theories,  which  have  been  largely  influenced  by 
intellectual  motives  and  interests,  the  theistic  conception 
is  the  outcome  of  a  more  purely  religious  motive.  Theism 
did  not  come  into  being  in  conscious  antagonism  to 
Deism  and  Pantheism,  nor  did  it  offer  itself  as  a  candid 
criticism  of  their  shortcomings :  it  shaped  itself  out  of  the 
needs  and  desires  of  the  religious  spirit  as  these  gradually 
defined  themselves  in  the  course  of  historic  development. 
It  accordingly  stands  in  a  close  relation  to  the  actual 
working  of  the  religious  consciousness.  As  one  would 
expect,  then,  the  spiritual  and  religious  values  have  played 
an  important  part  in  forming  the  theistic  view  of  the 
world.  When  men  approach  God  by  the  path  of  working 


THEISM  467 

religion,  they  do  not  ask  how  they  are  rationally  to  con- 
ceive of  him  :  they  rather  inquire  how  the  needs  of  the 
spirit  lead  them  to  represent  God  in  relation  to  the  world 
and  themselves.  But  the  idea  of  God  thus  formed  in 
response  to  the  demands  of  the  spiritual  life  may  properly 
be  made  the  object  of  reflexion.  Hence  on  the  basis  of 
theistic  religion  and  its  spiritual  values,  thought  has 
occupied  itself  with  the  problem  of  trying  to  think  out 
coherently  what  is  involved  in  the  notion  of  God  which  is 
the  outcome  of  developed  and  practical  religion. 

This  intimate  relation  of  Theism  to  the  living  interests 
of  religion  is  apparent  in  its  attitude  to  the  immanence  and 
transcendence  of  God.  It  maintains  both  conceptions,  led 
to  do  so  not  by  stress  of  logic,  but  by  the  claims  of 
spiritual  value.  The  spiritual  worshipper  requires  a  God 
not  far  off  but  very  near,  a  God  whose  spirit  bears  witness^ 
with  the  spirits  of  those  who  reverently  seek  him.  Com- 
munion with  a  Deity  dwelling  in  a  region  remote,  and 
dimly  discerned  '  on  the  limit  far  withdrawn,'  would  not  be 
the  living  communion  which  religion  requires.  Pious  feel- 
ing finds  God  within  the  region  of  human  activity ;  and  an 
Object  of  worship  whose  exclusive  dwelling-place  was  in 
the  ineffable  Beyond  could  neither  deeply  move  the  heart 
nor  inspire  the  will.  Yet  along  with  this  demand  for  the 
presence  of  God  in  the  world  the  religious  spirit  calls  for  a 
God  who  is  exalted  above  the  world  and  man,  the  mystery 
of  whose  being  the  human  reason  cannot  fully  penetrate.  / 
Were  it  not  stimulated  by  this  element  of  transcendence 
in  God,  the  flame  of  spiritual  reverence  would  sink  low. 
Eeligious  faith  will  not  be  satisfied  with  a  purely  mundane 
Deity :  faith  demands  that  its  Object  be  lifted  high  above 
the  sin  and  discord  of  the  world,  ruling  the  world  and 
working  in  it  for  good  without  being  submerged  by  it. 
The  consciousness  of  human  weakness,  and  the  emotions  of 
awe  and  reverence  which  are  active  in  worship,  are  bound 
up  with  man's  faith  in  the  transcendent  character  of  the 
Being  before  whom  he  bows. 

When  theistic  thought  has  tried  to  give  theoretical  ex- 


468     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

pression  to  the  view  of  God  implicit  in  the  higher  religious 
experience,  it  has  essentially  modified  the  principles  both 
of  Deism  and  Pantheism.  While  admitting  with  the 
deist  that  God  is  not  identical  with  the  world,  the  theist 
denies  that  the  world  is  independent  of  God.  He  discerns 
the  presence  of  divine  activity  behind  the  phenomena 
of  nature  and  life,  and  maintains  there  is  a  continuous 
revelation  of  God  in  and  to  the  spirits  of  men.  In  the 
other  direction,  Theism  corrects  the  statements  of  Panthe- 
ism, and  presents  them  in  a  form  which  is  consistent  with 
the  integrity  of  the  spiritual  values.  The  pantheistic 
assertion,  "  All  is  one,"  the  theist  transforms  into  the  very 
different  proposition,  "  All  depends  on  one."  To  put  it 
differently,  instead  of  saying  that  there  is  God  in  the 
universe  and  nothing  but  God,  Theism  declares  that  all 
elements  in  the  cosmos  are  related  to  a  single  experient 
Subject,  and  are  sustained  by  a  single  Will.  Again,  when 
the  pantheist  speaks  of  the  identity  of  the  self  with  God  in 
the  religious  consciousness,  the  theist  speaks  of  communion 
and  co-operation  with  God  in  religious  worship  and  religious 
life.  Thus  a  pure  identification  which,  rightly  understood, 
is  non-religious,  is  transformed  into  a  spiritual  and  ethical 
fellowship.  In  this  way  the  human  and  the  divine  aspects 
of  religious  experience  receive  rightful  recognition.  All 
through  it  will  be  found,  I  think,  that  Theism,  just  because 
it  is  a  genuine  interpretation  of  the  higher  religious 
experience,  does  justice  to  the  essentials  of  the  religious 
relationship  in  a  way  that  neither  Deism  nor  Pantheism 
can  pretend  to  do.  In  the  following  section  an  attempt  is 
made  to  state  more  fully  what  is  involved  in  the  theistic 
conception. 

B. — GOD  IN  KELATION  TO  THE  EXPERIENCED  WORLD. 

By  the  experienced  world  is  not  meant  nature  merely, 
but  the  world  as  a  complex  whole,  which  includes  animate 
and  inanimate  beings,  and  also  human  minds  or  spirits. 
From  the  world  thus  largely  conceived  we  have  tried  to 


GOD   AS   CREATIVE  469 

show  the  steps  which  take  us  back  to  its  explanation  in  a 
Supreme  and  Conscious  Will.  If  the  world  were  not  real, 
the  argument  must  fail  of  its  conclusion.  But  critical 
reflexion  fully  justifies  the  verdict  of  the  normal  human 
judgment,  that  neither  things  nor  spirits  are  illusory ;  and 
the  demand  for  a  Ground  to  explain  them  is  perfectly 
valid.  We  shall  therefore  take  our  previous  discussion  as 
going  to  prove  that  the  Divine  Will  is  the  ultimate 
Ground  of  all  finite  objects  and  spirits.  But  the  question 
is  still  to  answer,  whether  we  can  attain  to  a  more 
determinate  conception  of  the  way  in  which  the  Supreme 
Will  is  related  to  the  experienced  world.  Is  the  relation 
a  strictly  necessary  one  on  either  side,  so  that  just  as  the 
world  presupposes  God,  in  like  manner  God  presupposes  the 
world  ?  Is  the  relationship,  that  is  to  say,  one  of  mutual 
implication  ?  Or  if  this  be  deemed  erroneous,  is  it  possible 
to  conceive  the  relation  to  be  necessary  on  one  side  but 
free  on  the  other  ?  Theism  gives  a  general  answer  to 
these  questions  by  its  doctrine  of  creation.,  and  this  we 
shall  now  proceed  to  consider. 

(a)  God  as  Creative. 

The  first  point  which  needs  to  be  decided  is  the  pre- 
cise meaning  to  be  attached  to  the  term  'creation/  In 
common  parlance,  to  create  means  to  bring  into  being ;  but 
to  '  bring  into  being '  is  a  phrase  which  may  signify  to 
originate  absolutely,  or  it  may  merely  mean  to  invest  with 
a  certain  specific  form,  as  when  one  builds  a  house  out  of 
pre-existing  materials.  Now,  whether  the  external  world 
was  originated  or  received  its  present  form  at  a  point  in 
time,  is  a  subject  upon  which  physical  science  casts  no 
light.  Some  physicists  have  spoken  of  atoms  as 
'  manufactured  articles,'  and  others  have  asserted  that  this 
material  order  of  things  wears  the  appearance  of  having 
had  a  beginning  in  time,  while  by  the  gradual  dissipation 
of  energy  it  will  have  an  end.  Even  were  it  possible  to 
accept  these  statements,  they  do  not  carry  us  beyond  a 


y 


470     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

relative  beginning  of  things :  they  only  suggest  a  time 
when  the  universe  began  to  assume  its  present  form  and 
structure.  The  problem  of  an  absolute  origination  is  not 
touched. 

The  term  '  creative '  when  applied  to  God  has  had 
several  meanings,  and  it  may  be  well  to  consider  these. 
The  crudest  of  them  is  the  conception  that  God  somehow 
constructed  the  world  out  of  material  which  already 
existed,  working  after  the  fashion  of  a  human  architect. 
It  need  hardly  be  said  that  this  is  a  theory  which  no  serious 
thinker  can  for  a  moment  entertain.  Not  only  does  it 
found  on  a  gross  anthropomorphism,  but  it  involves  a 
fundamental  dualism,  since  it  postulates  an  original  matter 
over  against  God,  a  matter  he  finds  to  hand  when  he 
embarks  on  the  task  of  framing  a  world.  In  contrast  to 
this  rude  notion  is  the  familiar  but  respectable  theory  that 
God  created  the  world  out  of  nothing.  Yet  this  idea  of 
creation  out  of  nothing  has  something  contradictory  in  it, 
and  most  people  feel  the  force  of  the  old  maxim :  ex  nihilo 
nihil  fit.  There  is  no  doubt  a  certain  inconsistency  in  the 
idea  of  creating  out  of  nothing,  as  if  what  is  purely  negative 
could  be  made  in  some  inexplicable  fashion  to  yield  a 
positive ;  and  the  perception  of  the  difficulty  involved  has 
had  a  decided  effect  on  speculation.  In  truth,  when  we 
speak  of  creating,  it  is  almost  impossible  for  us  to  avoid 
the  use  of  terms  and  analogies  drawn  from  the  sphere  of 
human  activity ;  and  these,  though  applicable  to  relations 
within  the  experienced  world,  cannot  validly  describe  how 
the  world  itself  came  into  being.  What  is  important  in 
the  thought  of  creation  ex  nihilo  is  the  undoubted  fact, 
that  one  cannot  point  to  anything  out  of  which  the  world 
could  have  been  created.  This  disability  which  attaches 
to  our  human  mode  of  representation  is  awkwardly  and 
inadequately  turned  into  the  positive  statement  that  the 
world  was  created  out  of  nothing.  The  difficulty  of  this 
conception  led  to  another  view  of  the  nature  of  creation,  a 
view  which  has  figured  more  largely  in  ancient  than  in 
modern  speculation.  I  mean  the  theory  of  creation  as 


GOD   AS   CREATIVE  471 

emanation.  On  this  theory  the  world  is  an  efflux  from  * 
God,  a  manifestation  of  the  substance  of  his  being.  The 
world  in  this  way  is  thought  to  be  a  necessary  development 
of  God,  whose  life  passes  into  nature  and  mind,  and  returns 
from  them  again.  From  the  standpoint  of  theoretical 
explanation  this  conception  might  seem  to  possess  an 
advantage,  for  it  lays  stress  on  the  principle  of  continuity 
or  inner  connexion.  There  is  no  break  in  the  transition 
of  the  World-Ground  into  its  consequent:  God  is  the 
necessary  source  of  the  world,  and  the  world  is  the 
necessary  outcome  of  God.  Plainly,  however,  this  idea  is 
open  to  all  the  objections  which  can  be  urged  against 
Pantheism.  It  blends  the  being  of  God  with  things,  and 
its  conception  of  the  world  neither  gives  scope  for  human 
freedom  nor  for  the  development  of  the  ethical  values. 
Moreover,  it  offers  no  explanation  how  a  spiritual  emanation 
can  wear  the  appearance  of  a  material  and  spatially 
extended  universe.  In  the  end,  creation  by  emanation  is 
not  more  intelligible,  and  in  some  respects  leads  to  greater 
difficulties,  than  the  idea  of  creation  by  an  act  of  will. 
There  is,  indeed,  no  way  in  which  we  can  represent  to 
ourselves  the  process  by  which  the  Supreme  Will  brings 
things  into  being.  But  the  true  and  valuable  thought 
which  underlies  this  conception  of  a  creative  Will  is  the 
thought  of  a  constant  dependence  of  the  world  on  God. 
This  theory  at  all  events  presents  fewer  difficulties  than 
the  others. 

In  putting  forward  this  view  we  think  it  desirable  to 
make  certain  explanations,  and  to  remove  some  possible 
misconceptions.  And  first  of  all  we  shall  be  told,  that 
there  are  grave  objections  to  the  notion  that  the  world  was 
brought  into  being  at  a  specific  point  in  time ;  and  so  no 
doubt  there  are.  There  is  a  contradiction  in  the  idea  of  a 
Deity  quiescent  for  ages,  and  then,  late  in  time,  suddenly 
stimulated  to  create  a  world.  If  the  creation  of  the  world 
is  a  good,  then  God  for  ages  must  have  been  content  with 
a  lesser  when  it  was  in  his  power  to  produce  a  greater 
good.  Or,  if  not  content,  then,  though  he  desired  the 


472     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

greater  good,  his  will  must  have  been  inadequate  to  its 
achievement.  Neither  view  is  consistent  with  the  Divine 
Nature.  In  short,  what  conceivable  reason  for  creation 
could  become  operative  at  a  point  in  time  which  was  not 
operative  from  the  first  ?  To  these  criticisms  no  satis- 
factory answer  is  possible.  This  fact  suggests  to  us  that 
the  problem  may  have  been  wrongly  stated — stated  in  a 
way  which  involves  presuppositions  which  are  not  legitimate. 
This  turns  out  to  be  the  case.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive 
consistently  the  world  brought  into  being  at  a  point  in 
time,  for  in  so  doing  an  improper  use  is  being  made  of  the 
time-idea.  The  time-form  does  not  antedate  the  birth  of 
things,  but,  if  the  expression  may  be  allowed,  comes  into 
existence  with  them.  Augustine  perceived  this  truth  and 
expressed  it  in  his  saying :  non  in  tempore  sed  cum  tempore 
finxit  Deus  mundum.  On  similar  grounds,  it  seems, 
Origen  was  led  to  deny  that  the  world  had  a  beginning. 
From  the  theological  point  of  view  we  cannot  think  that 
God,  in  harmony  with  his  goodness,  formed  ideas  of  the 
world  but  delayed  to  realise  them.1  The  trouble,  we 
repeat,  is  due  to  a  fallacy  in  the  use  of  the  notion  of  time, 
the  fallacy,  as  Lotze  put  it,  of  interposing  empty  time 
between  the  world  as  possible  and  as  actual  For  time  is 
not  an  empty  form  within  which  a  possible  universe  is 
realised;  as  we  have  argued  more  than  once,  it  is  a 
conceptual  form  which  has  been  gradually  developed  on 
the  basis  of  the  real  and  its  changes.  Hence  the  mistake 
of  representing  creation  in  terms  of  a  form  of  order  which 
is  actually  posterior  to  it,  and  the  consequent  difficulty  of 
justifying  a  beginning  at  a  particular  point.  For  the 
notion  of  a  beginning  postulates  a  time-order  already 
existing. 

On  the  whole  the  perplexities  which  beset  this  subject 
are  largely  due  to  the  intrusion  of  human  causal  ideas  into 
a  sphere  where  they  have  no  relevancy.  It  is  futile  to 
try  to  form  any  image  of  creation  by  the  help  of  mundane 
or  *  transeunt '  causality.  For  such  envisagement  of  the 

1  So  Nitzsoh,  Evangelische  Dogmatik,  1912,  p.  431. 


GOD   AS   CREATIVE  473 

causal  relation  implies  the  existence  of  succession  in  time, 
and  signifies  a  process  which  has  continuance  in  time. 
This  concrete  representation  has  meaning  within  the 
orderly  world  of  our  experience,  but  it  cannot  apply  to 
the  divine  activity  in  bringing  the  temporal  world  into 
being.  God  is  prior  to  the  world  in  a  logical  rather  than  v 
in  a  temporal  sense. 

The  question  may  be  put,  whether  no  further  light  can 
be  shed  on  this  problem.  Is  the  most  and  best  we  can  do 
simply  to  confess  and  explain  the  limitations  of  our  minds  ? 
Can  we  not  say  something  positive  about  the  nature  of 
God's  creative  activity  ?  Attempts  have  been  made  to  do 
so,  but  they  do  not  carry  us  very  far.  A  recent  writer  on 
the  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  tells  us  the  Divine  Nature  is  a 
living  unity  which  contains  '  potencies '  within  it :  creation 
denotes  the  passing  forth  of  these  '  potencies '  into  existence 
by  an  act  of  the  Divine  Will,  though  how  this  takes  place, 
we  are  told,  must  remain  a  mystery.1  The  explanation 
seems  to  be  verbal  rather  than  real.  The  contrast  implied 
of  possible  and  actual  can  only  be  thought  out  by  an 
illegitimate  application  of  our  idea  of  time  to  God ;  and 
there  are  serious  objections  to  our  importing  the  notion  of 
unrealised  possibilities  into  the  nature  of  the  Deity.  For 
we  are  applying  the  analogy  of  human  development  to  a 
Being  whom  we  must  suppose  to  be  intrinsically  perfect 
and  complete. 

The  inherent  impulse  to  visualise  in  terms  of  mundane  ' 
experience  effectively  precludes  us  from  successfully  re- 
presenting the  divine  creative  activity.  The  human  will 
in  bringing  about  results  in  the  external  world  is  constantly 
dealing  with  a  matter  which  is  given  to  it,  and  more  or 
less  intractable.  Herein  lies  the  essential  difference 
between  the  human  will  and  the  Divine  Will.  God  in  his 
creative  act  of  will  is  limited  by  nothing  outside  himself, 
and  in  willing  he  gives  being  to  the  content  of  his  will. 
The  object  of  his  will  is  not  outside  himself,  but  in  willing 
is  one  with  his  will.  For  God,  the  transcendent  Creator, 

1  A.  Dorner,  Grundriss  der  Religionsphilosophie,  pp.  239-240. 


474     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

is  the  ground  both  of  what  he  knows  and  what  he  wills. 
Professor  Ward  has  suggested  that  some  analogy  to  creative 
action  may  be  found  in  the  work  of  creative  genius  among 
men.1  The  analogy  will  prove  helpful  if  it  is  not  pressed 
too  far.  The  poet  or  the  artist,  by  the  exercise  of  his  will, 
gives  outward  form  and  body  to  his  thoughts  and  emotions, 
so  that  they  acquire  a  kind  of  being  for  themselves  and 
'  live,  and  act,  and  serve  the  future  hour/  The  creative 
spirit  is  able  to  endow  its  intuitions  with  a  sort  of  spiritual 
independence  which,  in  the  case  of  works  of  the  highest 
genius,  does  not  suffer  them  to  grow  old  and  die.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  plain  that  human  genius  requires  the 
mediation  of  an  external  order  of  things  to  give  substance 
and  endurance  to  its  thoughts.  In  the  case  of  God's 
creative  Will  there  can  be  no  such  mediation;  and  the 
object  of  the  Divine  Will  must  remain  always  in  living 
'  relation  to  God  and  in  constant  dependence  upon  him. 
The  created  world,  though  it  is  distinguished  from  God, 
has  nevertheless  no  being  apart  from  God.  According  to 
the  theory  suggested  in  these  pages,  the  continuum  or 
common  medium,  the  preliminary  basis  within  which 
individual  centres  of  experience  form  and  interact,  would 
be  the  immediate  and  direct  expression  of  God's  creative 
Will.  And  what  we  call  creation  is  just  our  human  way 
/  of  expressing  the  intimate  and  continuous  dependence  of 
this  world  in  the  making  on  God.  The  differentiations 
and  interactions  by  which  development  proceeds  participate 
in  this  constant  dependence  on  the  divine  Ground.  We 
cannot  properly  say  this  interacting  system  is  ushered  into 
being  at  a  point  within  the  time  series.  For  the  time- 
order  itself  is  a  conceptual  development  gradually  elaborated 
by  individual  minds  which  have  evolved  within  the  cosmic 
whole. 

(b)  God  as  Immanent  and  Transcendent. 

In  the  preceding  section,  when  dealing  with  "  Historic 
Conceptions  of  God,"  we  had  occasion  to  refer  frequently 

1  The  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  239. 


AS   IMMANENT   AND   TRANSCENDENT  475 

to  the  divine  immanence  and  transcendence.  The  problem, 
however,  deserves  to  be  discussed  directly  and  critically ; 
for  the  terms  are  often  used  without  any  exact  appreciation 
of  their  meaning,  and  thus  a  specious  phrase  may  cover  a 
real  vagueness  of  thought.  In  particular,  what  precise 
significance  attaches  to  the  immanence  of  God  from  the 
theistic  standpoint  V  In  stating  the  question  in  this  way 
one  has  to  remember  that  the  word  immanence  can  have 
a  double  reference,  to  nature  and  to  the  human  mind.  In 
a  pantheistic  system  there  ought  not  to  be  any  reasonable 
doubt  about  the  sense  in  which  God  is  immanent.  Im- 
manence in  this  case  must  in  the  long  run  resolve  itself 
into  an  identification  with  God.  When  pantheistic  idealists 
affirm  that  God  is  immanent  in  nature,  they  mean  that 
nature  is  a  phase,  if  not  a  perfect  and  complete  expression, 
of  God's  being.  And  the  immanence  of  God  in  the  human 
spirit  signifies  that  the  finite  mind  is  a  differentiation  of 
God's  spirit  under  certain  spatial  and  temporal  limitations. 
The  theist,  who  holds  that  the  religious  life  is  based  on 
communion  with  God,  not  on  identification  with  him, 
cannot  endorse  this  explanation ;  consequently  immanence 
means  something  different  for  him.  To  the  theist  God's 
immanence  must  primarily  denote  that  he  brings  the  world 
into  being  as  an  utterance  of  himself,  and  continually 
sustains  it  by  the  energy  of  his  will.  God  in  his  operation 
is  continuously  present  to  nature  ;  for  the  universal  medium, 
which  is  the  basis  of  all  interacting  things  and  spirits,  is  in 
direct  and  constant  dependence  upon  his  Will.  Human 
souls  share  the  dependence  of  the  medium  in  which  they 
interact,  and  their  activity  is  conditioned  by  the  divine 
activity.  Yet  souls  and  things  do  not  stand  in  the  same 
relation  to  God's  working.  In  the  sphere  of  individual 
spirits,  along  with  an  ultimate  dependence  on  God  there  is 
a  greater  relative  independence.  God  does  not  so  operate 
on  the  human  soul  that  it  becomes  his  mere  passive 
instrument:  man  has  a  will  of  his  own.  Accordingly 
when  religious  thinkers  speak  about  '  partaking  in  the  life 
of  God/  it  means  response  to  divine  influence  and  ethical 


476     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

communion  with  God,  not  actual  identification  with  him. 
Despite  the  language  which  mystics  sometimes  use,  the 
theist  must  persist  in  refusing  to  admit  that  the  divine 
immanence  in  finite  spirits  signifies  a  fusion  or  blending  of 
natures.  The  decisive  objection  to  this  lies  in  the  character 
of  human  consciousness.  For  consciousness  is  unique.  My 
consciousness  is  distinctively  my  own ;  and  it  is  incon- 
ceivable how  it  should  continue  to  be  what  it  is  for  me 
and  at  the  same  time  to  be  an  element  in  a  larger  con- 
sciousness. To  say  that  God  knows  my  experience  is  one 
thing :  to  say  that  he  is  my  experience  is  a  totally  different 
thing. 

From  what  has  been  said  in  reference  to  immanence, 
the  manner  in  which  the  theist  regards  transcendence 
follows.  God  transcends  the  world  of  things  and  selves, 
for  he  is  not  identical  with  them  either  individually  or 
collectively.  He  is  beyond  them  in  the  sense  that,  while 
they  intimately  depend  on  him  and  he  acts  on  them,  his 
self -consciousness  does  not  depend  on  them.  The  spatial 
and  temporal  world  is  a  manifestation  of  the  Divine  Will, 
but  it  does  not  enter  into  the  substance  of  the  Divine 
Nature.  I  do  not  think,  however,  we  do  justice  to  God's 
transcendence,  if  we  suppose  the  Divine  Being  is  simply  a 
central  and  typical  self,  one  self  within  an  eternal  group 
of  selves.1  For  it  is  hard  to  find  any  sufficient  reason  for 
saying  that  finite  selves  are  intrinsically  eternal,  as  the 
theory  suggests ;  and  the  whole  point  of  our  argument 
has  been  to  show  the  dependence  of  finite  souls  and  things 
on  the  creative  Will  of  God.  If  that  argument  is  valid, 
God  does  not  fall  within  the  system  of  finite  spirits,  but 
is  the  active  Ground  which  conditions  their  existence. 
Divine  transcendence  rests  on  the  truth  that  God,  by  the 
activity  of  his  Will,  has  given  being  to  the  whole  ex- 
perienced world  in  space  and  time.  He  himself  is  beyond 

1  This  theory  is  vigorously  maintained  and  defended  by  Professor 
Howison  in  his  Limits  of  Evolution,  1905.  Dr.  McTaggart,  on  the  other 
hand,  does  away  with  the  central  self,  and  identifies  the  Absolute  with  a 
system  of  souls  or  selves  (Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology}. 


AS   INFINITE,    ETERNAL,    ABSOLUTE  477 

the  spatial  and  temporal  order :  he  is  the  transcendent 
Ground  of  the  cosmological  Whole,  and  invests  it  with 
the  unity  which  comes  of  a  constant  dependence  on 
himself. 


(c)  God  as  Infinite,  Eternal,  and  Absolute. 

In  contrast  to  the  finite  and  conditioned  things  in  our 
experienced  world,  God  is  commonly  termed  Infinite, 
Eternal,  and  Absolute.  It  will  be  advisable  to  consider 
what  is  the  exact  significance  of  these  terms  when  they 
are  applied  to  God.  And,  first  of  all,  what  is  meant  by 
saying  the  Deity  is  infinite  ?  The  natural  tendency  is  to 
take  the  word  in  the  negative  sense  where  it  denotes  the 
opposite  of  the  finite.  The  finite  in  common  language  is 
the  limited,  the  bounded;  so  the  infinite  is  that  which 
is  unlimited  or  boundless.  This  is  the  quantitative  in- 
finite, the  false  infinite,  as  Hegel  termed  it.  And  it  is 
clear  if  we  are  to  call  God  infinite  in  this  manner,  not 
only  has  the  predicate  no  ethical  or  religious  content,  but 
it  does  not  seem  to  be  compatible  with  self-consciousness. 
The  infinite  in  the  quantitative  aspect,  resting  as  it  does 
on  spatial  imagery,  is  inherently  inadequate  to  a  spiritual 
Being  who  transcends  the  spatial  order.  To  the  argument 
of  Sir  William  Hamilton  that  we  cannot  know  a  Being 
infinite  in  this  way,  and  therefore  incapable  of  entering 
into  positive  relations  with  the  finite,  the  religious  man 
can  tranquilly  reply  that  he  has  no  interest  in  knowing 
him.  For  he  could  have  no  spiritual  value  to  human 
souls.  In  contrast  to  this  quantitative  and  negative  use 
of  the  word,  there  is  a  qualitative  and  positive  use  which 
has  a  religious  value.  In  this  qualitative  meaning  the 
infinite  denotes  the  perfect  and  complete,  and  so  stands  in 
a  positive  and  effective  contrast  to  the  finite.  The  finite 
is  finite  because  the  grounds  and  conditions  of  its  existence 
lie  beyond  itself,  and  are,  so  to  speak,  imposed  on  it  from 
without.  In  virtue  of  this  intrinsic  incompleteness  it 
cannot  permanently  maintain  itself  by  its  own  inherent 


478     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

resources.  If  we  use  the  word  infinite  at  all  when  speaking 
of  God,  it  must  bear  this  positive  meaning  of  perfect, 
complete,  and  self-sufficient.  God  is  subject  to  no  limi- 
tations which  do  not  issue  from  his  own  Will,  and  he  is 
himself  the  sufficient  Ground  of  all  finite  existences.  He 
is  not  infinite  in  the  sense  that  he  embraces  all  existence 
within  himself.  Therefore,  from  one  point  of  view,  he  is 
limited  by  a  world  of  things  and  spirits  which  are  other 
than  himself.  But  this  limitation  does  not  spell  defect,  for 
it  is  self-limitation ;  consequently  it  does  not  carry  with  it 
the  notion  of  restricted  or  diminished  value. 

Of  greater  religious  significance  is  the  notion  of  eternity 
when  applied  to  the  Divine  Being.  Here,  too,  the  con- 
ception has  a  negative  side,  which  has  come  prominently 
forward  in  the  first  instance.  In  contrast  to  the  muta- 
bility and  decay  which  are  the  doom  of  all  earthly  things, 
religious  thought  has  striven  to  rise  to  the  idea  of  a  Being 
who  was  lifted  high  above  the  flux  of  time,  and  was  '  the 
same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever/  And  the  mind  first 
tried  to  give  expression  to  this  notion  of  eternity  in  a 
negative  way :  it  was  the  unending  expanse  of  time,  the 
everlasting  duration.  Here  again  we  are  confronted  with 
a  quantitative,  and  therefore  an  inadequate  conception. 
To  some,  no  doubt,  the  mystery  and  the  greatness  of  Deity 
appeared  to  be  enhanced  when  he  was  thought  to  fill  all 
time,  extending  backward  and  forward  into  the  limitless 
past  and  future.  But  here  also  developing  thought  began 
to  question  the  legitimacy  of  the  idea.  After  Kant's 
criticism,  the  problem  of  eternity  was  put  in  a  new  light, 
and  the  idea  of  timelessness,  or  of  reality  beyond  time, 
became  familiar.  Time,  it  is  said,  denotes  a  point  of  view 
which  is  valid  for  phenomena,  but  it  has  no  application  to 
what  is  ultimately  real.  Eternity  or  timelessness  has 
therefore  been  construed  to  mean  the  complete  negation  of 
the  time- process,  and  a  timeless  character  has  been  ascribed 
to  the  transcendental  self  and  to  God. 

The  theory,  stated  in  this  unqualified  form,  is  open  to 
serious  criticism.  If  eternity  is  the  pure  negation  of  time, 


AS   INFINITE,    ETERNAL,    ABSOLUTE  479 

and  if  God  is  eternal  in  this  sense,  one  of  two  things  must 
follow.  Either  the  timeless  God  is  absolutely  cut  off  from 
the  world  of  existences  within  which  the  time-process 
rules;  or  if  not,  God,  the  timeless  Beality,  is  the  truth 
of  the  universe,  and  the  mundane  time-process  is  a  sheer 
illusion,  the  reality  of  which  is  the  timelessly  perfect 
Whole.  Neither  alternative  of  this  awkward  dilemma  can 
possibly  be  accepted  by  the  theist,  who  seeks  to  think  of 
God  in  a  manner  consistent  with  his  supreme  value,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  maintain  the  values  of  the  historic 
life.  And  if  these  objects  are  to  be  attained,  the  Divine 
Being,  though  not  made  subject  to  the  time  movement, 
must  at  least  have  what  has  been  termed  a  '  functional 
relation '  to  that  process.  If  we  are  not  to  import  into 
our  idea  of  Deity  a  limitation  or  disability  of  a  pronounced 
kind,  we  must  conclude  that  God  stands  in  relation  to 
succession  in  time,  and  this  succession  has  a  meaning  for 
him.  The  complete  exclusion  of  any  reference  to  time  in 
the  Divine  Consciousness  would  imply  that  God  was  shut 
out  from  the  knowledge  of  mundane  development  and  of 
human  history,  since  to  know  what  is  in  time  the  mind 
must  stand  in  a  positive  relation  to  time.  A  limitation  of 
this  kind  is  in  conflict  with  the  religious  postulate  of  Value. 
A  God  who  could  not  know  the  time-changes  in  finite 
minds  could  not  be  reverenced  as  God.  Moreover,  as  we 
have  already  urged,  the  fact  of  change  is  fundamental,  and 
no  mind  is  conceivable,  whether  human  or  divine,  which 
does  not  imply  states  of  consciousness  that  change.  A 
God  absolutely  removed  from  change  might  be  an  im- 
personal substance :  he  could  not  be  a  living  and  spiritual 
God.  The  reality  of  changes  in  the  Divine  Mind  guarantees 
the  relation  which  is  essential  on  God's  part  to  the  humanly 
developed  time-form  ;  though  it  is  not  possible  for  our  con- 
crete thinking,  infected  as  it  is  with  spatial  and  temporal 
images,  to  form  an  adequate  representation  of  the  Divine 
Consciousness.  The  general  conclusion  to  which  we  are 
led  in  this  difficult  matter  of  the  Divine  Eternity  may  be 
thus  briefly  stated.  God  is  not  eternal  in  the  seDse  of 


480     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

filling  endless  time :  this  is  a  contradictory  notion,  and  is, 
moreover,  destitute  of  spiritual  value.  Nor  is  he  eternal 
in  the  sense  of  having  no  relation  to  time.  God  could  not 
be  unrelated  to  time  and  retain  his  spiritual  value.  He 
is  eternal  because  he  is  raised  above  the  process  of  time : 
he  is  the  ultimate  condition  of  the  existence  of  such  a 
process,  and  therefore  not  himself  subject  to  it. 

A  short  reference  to  the  use  of  the  term  Absolute  in 
regard  to  God  seems  desirable  in  view  of  the  large  part 
played  by  the  word  in  contemporary  philosophy.  A  con- 
siderable number  of  thinkers  at  present  identify  God  with 
the  Absolute,  while  some  believe  the  title  is  misleading  and 
that  it  is  better  to  avoid  it.1  There  is  a  sense  in  which 
the  theist  may  apply  the  word  to  God,  and  a  sense  in 
which  he  ought  not  to  do  so.  Let  us  consider  the  latter 
first. 

In  current  philosophy  the  word  Absolute  is  frequently 
used  to  signify  Ultimate  Keality,  the  Reality  which  is  all- 
embracing,  harmonious,  and  complete.  Those  who  adopt 
this  view  commonly  try  to  show  that,  if  we  loyally  follow 
the  pathway  to  Reality,  we  inevitably  reach  the  Absolute 
as  the  goal  of  our  journey.  Experience  at  its  different 
levels,  we  are  told,  is  beset  by  contradictions.  We  pass 
from  one  form  of  experience  to  another,  only  to  find  that 
no  form  can  be  thought  out  consistently.  Each  phase  of 
experience  is  therefore  condemned  as  an  appearance,  or  at 
least  shown  to  come  short  of  reality,  when  we  apply  the 
principle  of  non-contradiction ;  and  we  are  forced  to  go 
further  in  the  quest  for  Reality  which  is  perfect,  satisfy- 
ing, and  internally  harmonious.2  The  principle  of  non- 

1  To  the  former  class  belong  the  philosophers  who  in  the  main  sympathise 
with  the  Hegelian  line  of  thought :  to  the  latter  those  who  prefer  to  call 
themselves  'Personal  Idealists.' 

1  Readers  of  Prof.  Bosanquet's  recent  Gilford  Lectures  on  the  Principle  of 
Individuality  and  Value,  and  the  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  will 
remember  how  persistently  he  uses  the  principle  of  non-contradiction — here 
following  Mr.  Bradley — as  a  guide  to  the  Absolute.  Though  the  principle  of 
identity  is  even  more  important,  in  this  discussion  it  drops  into  a  very 
secondary  place,  so  far  as  the  world  of  common  experience  is  concerned. 


AS   INFINITE,    ETERNAL,    ABSOLUTE  481 

contradiction  is  thus  made  to  give  the  steps  of  the  proof 
which  carries  us  triumphantly  forward  to  the  Absolute. 
Under  the  solvent  of  this  all-powerful  principle  even  the 
identity  of  individuals  yields,  and  they  are  merged  in  the 
one  identity  which  persists  and  maintains  itself,  the 
concrete  Whole,  the  Absolute.  One  might  reply  to  this 
*  plain  tale '  by  denying  that  the  individual  elements  of 
reality  can  be  forced  by  this  mental  dialectic  to  yield  up 
their  identity  in  such  a  submissive  fashion,  and  become 
fluctuating  expressions  of  the  Absolute.  What  we  are 
immediately  concerned  to  point  out  is,  that  the  Absolute, 
so  conceived,  ought  not  to  be  identified  with  God,  for  all 
reality  does  not  fall  within  the  Divine  Being.  God  is  not 
the  Whole,  but  all  things  depend  on  God.  If,  then,  we  use 
the  term  Absolute,  we  should  be  careful  to  point  out  that 
we  do  not  do  so  after  the  manner  of  a  pantheistic  idealism 
where  it  coincides  with  the  idea  of  God.  According  to  the 
theory  developed  in  the  preceding  pages  the  term  Absolute 
would  signify  God,  and  the  world  of  spirits  interacting 
within  a  common  medium  dependent  on  God.  In  other 
words,  the  universe  as  a  system  is  the  Absolute,  and 
God  is  not  identical  with  the  universe. 

So  far  our  conclusion  is  negative.  There  is,  however, 
a  valid  meaning  which  the  word  Absolute  may  have  when 
applied  to  God.  God  is  Absolute  in  that  he  is  the  un- 
conditioned Ground  of  all  finite  existences,  and  is  only 
limited  in  so  far  as  he  limits  himself  through  the  world 
which  he  has  created.  God  may  therefore  be  appropriately 
designated  the  Absolute  Ground  of  the  world,  for  he  is  the 
sole  and  the  sufficient  reason  of  its  existence.  He  may 
also  be  called  Absolute,  because  he  is  a  Being  harmonious 
and  self-complete,  whose  consciousness  embraces  the  whole 
universe.  But  Absolute  in  the  theistic  acceptation  of 
the  word  is  definitely  distinguished  from  the  speculative 
Absolute  which  is  the  sum  of  reality.  £ 


482     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

C. — METAPHYSICAL  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD. 

The  foregoing  remarks  may  be  fitly  followed  by  some 
observations  on  what  are  commonly  termed  "  Metaphysical 
Attributes  of  God."  The  subject,  as  one  would  expect,  is 
treated  in  a  full  and  positive  manner  by  the  theologian :  in 
the  case  of  the  religious  philosopher  the  discussion  will 
proceed  on  more  general  and  critical  lines.  For  the 
attributes  in  question  can  scarcely  be  said  to  issue  from 
speculative  theorising  about  the  nature  of  God.  They  are 
rather  demands  of  the  religious  consciousness,  and  im- 
plicated in  its  practical  working :  they  reflect  the  desire 
on  man's  part  for  a  more  concrete  representation  of  the 
Being  he  worships.  Nevertheless  a  Philosophy  of  Religion 
has  a  critical  as  well  as  a  constructive  function  to  discharge, 
and  ought  to  point  out,  if  it  can,  how  consistency  in  our 
religious  conceptions  is  to  be  attained. 

The  matter  is  one  which  naturally  provokes  critical, 
and  sometimes  sceptical,  reflexions.  Are  these  so-called 
attributes  purely  relative  and  subjective  points  of  view  ? 
Or  are  they  based,  as  they  claim  to  be,  on  the  nature  of 
God  ?  Are  they  human  qualities  duly  magnified  and  then 
applied  to  the  Deity  ?  or  do  they  express  in  some  way  a 
real  activity  of  God  in  relation  to  man  ?  This  problem 
was  raised  by  theology  in  the  course  of  its  development, 
and  has  received  different  answers.  The  later  mediaeval 
Nominalists,  for  instance,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
attributes  merely  denoted  subjective  modes  of  our  appre- 
hension, and  distinction  between  attributes  was  a  matter 
of  names.  In  modern  times  the  negative  and  critical 
attitude  in  this  regard  is  well  represented  by  the  Dutch 
theologian  Rauwenhoff.  He  frankly  traces  the  doctrine  of 
the  Divine  Attributes  to  its  source  in  the  religious  imagina- 
tion, and  asserts  that  a  Philosophy  of  Religion  is  not  in  a 
position  to  determine  what  amount  of  truth  may  be  con- 
tained in  these  representations.  The  problem  for  him 
becomes  a  purely  psychological  one,  so  far  as  a  religious 
philosophy  is  concerned.  On  the  other  hand,  the  procedure 


OMNIPOTENCE  483 

of  Schleiermacher,  though  critical,  goes  further  in  the 
direction  of  giving  an  objective  basis  to  the  doctrine.  The 
attributes  he  construes  as  relations  of  God  to  the  world, 
and  he  says  they  express  modes  in  which  the  Divine 
Causality  appears  to  us.1  This  theory,  while  recognising 
the  subjective  factor  in  human  representation,  does  not 
deny  the  representation  has  an  objective  reference.  None 
the  less  the  influence  of  Kant  and  Schleiermacher  has 
tended  to  make  modern  theology  more  critical  and  cautious 
in  its  treatment  of  the  topic.  The  present  tendency  is  to 
discard  the  methods  of  the  older  theologians, — the  argu- 
ments which  proceed  via  eminentice  and  via  negationis — 
and  to  reach  the  divine  attributes  from  the  basis  of  historic 
revelation.  And  this  has  meant  a  gain  in  simplicity  and 
spirituality.  At  present  I  shall  restrict  our  discussion  to 
certain  attributes  which  have  been  commonly  termed 
metaphysical.  It  is  not  assumed  that  they  can  be  proved 
by  reason  to  be  implicated  in  the  nature  of  God.  But 
historically  they  have  been  associated  with  him,  and  to 
some  extent  they  do  enter  into  religious  experience.  Our 
endeavour  will  be  to  determine  how  far,  and  in  what  form, 
reflexion  can  justify  us  in  predicating  them  of  God.  The 
attributes  are  Omnipotence,  Omnipresence,  and  Omniscience. 

(a)  Omnipotence. 

At  every  stage  of  his  religious  development,  man 
associates  with  his  god  the  idea  of  power.  His  deity  can 
do  for  the  worshipper  what  the  latter  cannot  do  for 
himself.  A  god  thought  to  be  destitute  of  power  would 
possess  no  working- value,  and  could  not  continue  to  be  an 
object  of  reverence.  With  the  development  of  monotheism 
out  of  polytheism  and  the  recognition  of  the  transcendent 

1  Schleiermacher,  however,  does  not  accept  the  view  that  each  attribute 
stands  for  a  distinct  element  in  the  Divine  Nature.  "Alle  Eigenschaften, 
welche  wir  Gott  beilegen,  sollen  nicht  etwas  Besonderes  in  Gott  bezeichnen, 
sondern  nur  etwas  Besonderes  in  der  Art  das  Schlechthinige  Abhangigkeits- 
gefiihl  auf  ihn  zu  beziehen,"  Christ.  Glaube,  par.  50. 


484     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

character  of  God,  the  attribute  of  power  was  gradually 
expanded  to  that  of  Omnipotence.  This  process  was  the 
expression  of  a  true  spiritual  need.  Theistic  religion  calls 
for  a  Deity  who  can  alike  control  the  forces  of  nature  and 
guide  the  issues  of  life,  and  in  whose  hands  the  destinies 
of  souls  are  secure.  Faith  would  be  crippled  in  its 
assurance  and  fail  of  its  fulness,  if  the  object  of  its  trust 
were  a  Being  wrestling  with  difficulties  which  he  could 
only  partially  overcome. 

But  what  exactly  does  the  conception  of  Omnipotence 
signify  ?  Is  it  to  be  taken  literally  to  mean  that  nothing 
is  impossible  to  God  ?  Some  have  thought  that  Omni- 
potence was  incompatible  with  any  limitations  whatever. 
The  fact  that  God  uses  means,  and  does  not  bring  about 
the  result  by  his  mere  word,  seemed  to  J.  S.  Mill  to  prove 
he  was  not  omnipotent,  for  he  worked  under  limitations.1 
In  reply,  one  would  say  that  limitations  which  are  willed 
by  God  do  not  mean  defects ;  and  when,  in  presence  of  a 
universe  of  existences,  what  is  possible  for  God  becomes 
restricted  to  what  is  compossible,  in  the  Leibnizian  sense, 
this  does  not  argue  weakness  on  his  part.  To  test  Omni- 
potence by  mere  abstract  possibility  leads  only  to  irrelevant 
subtleties.  It  may  be  quite  true,  as  Augustine  said,  that 
it  is  not  possible  for  God  to  die,  to  make  what  is  done 
undone,  or  what  is  false  true.  Yet  inability  to  perform 
what  is  intrinsically  contradictory  has  no  bearing  on  the 
positive  conception  of  Omnipotence.  Nothing  whatever 
would  be  gained  for  the  idea  of  God  by  attributing  to  him 
the  power  to  do  what  is  absurd.  The  initial  error — an 
error  to  which  we  have  already  referred  in  another 
connexion — lies  in  supposing  that  the  abstract  notions  of 
possibility  and  impossibility  are  prior  to  the  ultimately 
Real,  or  to  God.  On  the  contrary,  these  ideas  come  into 
being  with  the  world  of  dependent  and  developing 
existences ;  and  the  conception  of  a  possibility  for  God 
which  he  does  not  will  becomes  a  pure  abstraction.  The 
positive  and  valuable  element  in  the  idea  of  Omnipotence 

1  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  1885,  pp.  176-77. 


OMNIPRESENCE  485 

lies  in  the  region  of  fact  and  not  of  possibility.  God  is 
omnipotent,  since  he  has  power  to  invest  the  content  of  his 
Will  with  reality,  and  because  the  whole  realm  of 
mundane  existence,  including  the  system  of  interacting 
individuals,  is  constantly  sustained  by  his  activity.  God 
is  all-powerful,  for  he  is  the  independent  and  self-sufficient  * 
Ground  of  the  being  of  the  world,  and  therefore  not  limited 
by  anything  which  does  not  proceed  from  his  own  Will. 

There  is  an  important  question  into  which  I  have  not 
entered,  and  do  not  propose  to  enter  just  now.  It 
concerns  the  bearing  of  the  sin  and  evil  that  are  in  the 
world  on  this  notion  of  Omnipotence.  If  God  were 
omnipotent  he  would  not  suffer  sin  to  exist,  it  is  said. 
If  he  is  omnipotent  and  allows  it  to  exist,  this  is  a 
reflexion  on  his  goodness.  These  questions  will  be  more 
fitly  treated  in  the  chapter  on  the  problem  of  evil  They 
cannot  be  properly  discussed  apart  from  an  examination 
of  the  nature  of  evil. 


(b)  Omnipresence. 

The  religious  need  which  finds  expression  in  this 
predicate  is  the  outcome  of  the  developed  religious 
consciousness.  Primitive  religion  is  local:  its  gods  have 
their  peculiar  habitations,  and  in  going  into  a  strange  land 
a  man  comes  under  the  dominion  of  strange  gods.  Though 
not  equally  dominated  by  the  genius  of  the  place, 
Polytheism  is  pervaded  by  the  departmental  spirit,  and 
the  activity  and  influence  of  particular  deities  are  restricted 
to  particular  spheres.  In  Monotheism  all  spheres  come 
under  the  rule  of  the  one  God  who  is  everywhere  present 
in  his  world.  In  the  Old  Testament  there  are  striking 
assertions  of  the  ubiquity  of  Jahveh.  Nowhere  can  man 
escape  the  universal  Presence.  "  If  I  ascend  up  into 
heaven,  thou  art  there :  if  I  make  my  bed  in  Sheol,  behold, 
thou  art  there.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning  and 
dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea ;  even  there  shall 
thy  hand  lead  me,  and  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me." 


486     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

(Pa.  cxxxix.).  And  again  :  "  Do  not  I  fill  heaven  and  earth 
saith  the  Lord "  (Jer.  xxiii.  24).  A  truly  spiritual 
conception  of  God  carries  with  it  the  belief  in  the  divine 
Omnipresence,  thus  finally  transcending  the  cult  of 
locality  so  dear  to  ancient  religion.  The  spiritual 
worshipper  feels  no  barrier  can  shut  him  out  from  the 
object  of  his  reverence,  for  God  is  always  near  to  them 
who  call  upon  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 

The  religious  consciousness  rests  satisfied  in  its 
conviction  that  God  is  omnipresent,  and  does  not  ask 
about  the  way  in  which  he  is  present.  But  the  religious 
philosopher  is  not  absolved  from  dealing  with  this 
problem,  and  he  must  ask  how  this  presence  of  God  is  to 
be  construed.  It  is,  of  course,  obvious  that,  for  the  theist, 
the  pantheistic  answer  is  excluded:  God  is  not  every- 
where because  he  is  everything.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  think 
how  the  Being  of  God  is  somehow  present  at  every  point 
in  space.  The  truth  is  that  we  cannot  refer  God,  who  is 
a  Spirit,  to  the  spatially  extended  world,  and  that  because 
he  is  not  a  Being  in  space.  This  is  another  instance  of 
the  fallacy  of  supposing  what  is  dependent  on  God  to  be 
prior  to  him.  God  is  the  condition  of  space ;  for  he 
brings  into  being  the  world  of  interacting  individuals  and 
the  medium  in  which  they  interact,  and  it  is  out  of  this 
co-existence  of  individual  elements  that  the  idea  of  spatial 
order  is  developed.  Consequently  the  Divine  Being  cannot 
be  limited  by  space,  which,  in  its  conceptual  form,  is  a 
derived  idea  that  implies  a  process  of  ideal  construction. 
At  the  same  time  the  sphere  of  his  operation  must  extend 
to  every  point  of  space,  since  he  is  the  active  Ground  of  all 
existences ;  hence  the  notion  of  Omnipresence  is  only  a 
way  of  expressing  the  truth  that  the  Being  of  God  is  not 
separable  from  his  activity.  God  is  everywhere  in  the 
sense  that  he  makes  his  working  everywhere  felt.  This 
activity,  inasmuch  as  it  transcends  the  spatial  order,  has 
not  to  travel  through  space,  nor  does  the  human  spirit  need 
to  traverse  space  in  order  to  come  to  God.1  For  God  is 

1  Cp.  Lotze,  Religionsphilosophie,  p.  33. 


OMNISCIENCE  487 

the  ever-present  Ground  of  the  world.  An  analogy  may 
suggest  to  us  how  we  should  regard  this  Omnipresence. 
The  soul  or  spiritual  principle  is  operative  throughout  the 
body,  and  stands  in  direct  relation  to  all  the  bodily 
elements.  Yet,  being  a  spiritual  principle,  it  cannot  be 
located  in  any  organ  or  part  of  the  body,  although  it  per- 
vades the  whole.  In  like  manner  we  may  think  of  God 
pervading  his  universe  and  active  throughout  it,  without 
himself  being  included  in  the  order  of  things  which  co-exist 
in  space. 

(c)  Omniscience. 

Omniscience,  remarks  Mill  in  the  work  before  quoted, 
has  nothing  positively  to  prove  it.1  We  agree  that  there 
is  no  course  of  argument  which  can  deduce  the  attribute  of 
Omniscience  in  God  from  the  facts  of  human  experience. 
Nevertheless,  monotheistic  faith  does  find  the  idea  of 
Omniscience  involved  in  its  conception  of  the  complete- 
ness and  perfection  of  Deity,  and  theologians  have  always 
included  the  attribute  in  their  discussion  of  the  Divine 
Nature.  It  remains,  therefore,  to  ask  whether  philosophy 
can  justify  theology  in  this  matter,  and,  if  so,  in  what 
way. 

When  we  speak  of  Omniscience  we  speak  of  something 
to  which  human  experience  offers  no  analogy,  but  a 
decided  contrast.  Man's  experience  is  always  partial  and 
his  insight  fragmentary,  and  he  is  beset  on  every  side  by 
limitations  to  his  knowledge.  He  develops  as  an  in- 
dividual within  a  wider  realm  of  existence,  whose  meaning 
he  spells  out  painfully  and  at  the  best  comprehends 
imperfectly.  Man,  burdened  by  the  consciousness  of  his 
own  ignorance,  and  often  thwarted  by  it,  naturally  thinks 
his  Deity  to  be  free  of  this  defect.  The  possibility  of 
Divine  Omniscience  must  lie  in  the  central  relation  of 
God  to  his  universe,  in  virtue  of  which  all  the  elements 
within  it  converge  on  him  as  their  active  Source  and 
Ground.  This  living  relation  of  God  to  the  whole  of 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  181. 


488     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

reality  suggests  that  his  experience  is  universal,  and  his 
consciousness  all-embracing.  If  God  be  the  self-conscious 
Will  who  is  the  constant  Ground  of  the  medium  in  which 
individual  existences  and  spirits  interact,  then  every  fact 
and  movement  within  the  complex  whole  must  have  a 
reference  to  him  and  possess  a  meaning  for  him.  The 
limitation  of  experience,  therefore,  which  of  itself  precludes 
completeness  of  knowledge  on  man's  part,  does  not  exist 
in  God ;  and  a  universal  experience  would  form  the  basis 
for  a  universal  knowledge. 

When  we  speak  of  an  all-knowing  Mind,  we  cannot 
suppose  that  such  a  knowledge,  in  its  form,  can  be  a 
mere  expansion  of  human  knowledge.  Man  knows  in  a 
discursive  fashion,  and  the  process  of  reasoning  means 
effort,  and  it  takes  time.  He  reasons  from  what  is  given 
to  what  is  implied  in  it,  and  laboriously  strives  to  spell 
out  in  thought  the  systematic  connexions  involved  in  the 
structure  of  reality.  But  human  knowing,  though  it  has 
in  it  the  impulse  towards  system,  remains  fragmentary 
and  unfinished :  indeed,  to  make  headway  at  all  we  have 
to  concentrate  our  attention  on  a  certain  aspect  of  reality 
to  the  exclusion  of  other  aspects.  In  the  very  form  of 
human  judgment  an  act  of  abstraction  is  implied  which, 
if  it  does  not  mean  untruth,  at  least  means  incompleteness. 
Moreover,  the  shortcomings  of  memory  preclude  full  know- 
ledge of  details  in  any  direction.  Now  this  piecemeal 
form  of  knowing,  which  carries  on  its  face  the  impress 
of  human  limitations,  cannot  apply  to  God.  His  Mind 
cannot  be  under  bondage  to  the  human  form  of  reasoning ; 
for  this  takes  time,  presupposes  a  development  from  less 
to  fuller  knowledge,  and  consequently  ignorance  to  be 
overcome.  Our  right  to  postulate  a  higher  kind  of  know- 
ledge in  God  will  lie  in  the  unique  relation  in  which  he 
stands  to  the  objects  of  his  knowledge.  Objects  are  not 
given  to  him  from  without  to  be  known,  but  are  the 
expression  of  his  Will  and  remain  dependent  upon  it. 
Hence  we  may  suppose  that  all  the  factors  of  reality, 
being  intimately  related  to  and  experienced  by  God,  are 


OMNISCIENCE  489 

known  by  him  by  'intellectual  intuition.'  This  scientia 
intuitiva  would  be  an  immediate  apprehension  of  the 
whole,  and  of  all  the  parts  in  their  place  and  meaning 
in  the  whole.  Each  movement  in  things  and  every 
thought  in  human  minds  imply  an  experience  in  God, 
and  are  immediately  discerned  by  him. 

But  there  is  an  embarrassing  problem  which  we  must 
try  to  answer.  Does  Divine  Omniscience  extend  to  the 
future  ?  Does  God  not  only  know  all  that  is  and  has 
been,  but  likewise  all  that  will  be  ?  The  rigid  predes- 
tinarian,  who  denies  all  freedom  and  contingency  within 
the  universe,  will,  of  course,  find  no  more  difficulty  in 
regard  to  the  future  than  in  regard  to  the  past.  All  is 
determined,  and  so  all  is  known.  Those  who  hold  it  is 
not  possible  entirely  to  eliminate  contingency  from  human 
development,  may  find  it  expedient  to  take  up  a  less 
unqualified  attitude.  The  question  of  divine  foreknow- 
ledge is,  of  course,  an  old  one ;  it  has  been  a  source  of 
much  perplexity,  and  very  likely  men  may  differ  about  it 
to  the  last.  The  Socinians  held  that  the  fact  of  human 
freedom  excluded  perfect  prescience  on  the  part  of  God. 
Theologians,  even  when  they  do  not  range  themselves  on 
the  Predestinarian  side,  have  mostly  drawn  back  from 
this  conclusion,  declaring  it  to  be  incompatible  with  the 
Absoluteness  of  God.  Wishing  to  abandon  neither  Divine 
Omniscience  nor  human  freedom,  they  hold  both  together, 
usually  on  the  plea  that  there  is  here  an  antinomy  which 
defies  solution  by  mortal  powers.  The  theologian  with  his 
capacity  for  enduring  contradictions  may  be  satisfied  to 
leave  the  matter  thus,  but  the  philosopher  will  certainly 
desire  some  further  explanation  and  justification.  It  has 
been  said  that  God,  in  contributing  the  means  to  the 
decisions  of  human  wills,  has  made  it  possible  for  himself 
to  foreknow  the  issue.1  Yet  this  is  not  intelligible,  unless 
you  suppose  that  the  means  also  contains  the  ground  of 
the  decision.  And  we  cannot  speak  of  human  freedom, 
if  the  sufficient  reason  of  an  act  lies  outside  the  self  aa 

1  Nitzsch,  Evangelische  Dogmatik,  p.  4  60. 


490     RELATIONS  AND  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD 

will.  To  those  who  may  demur  to  the  notion  that  Omni- 
science does  not  include  the  foreknowledge  of  every 
decision  of  the  human  will,  one  must  point  out  that  this 
does  not  imply  uncertainty  about  the  way  in  which 
human  actions  will  work  out.  The  consequences  of 
human  volition  in  the  world  of  existences  are  constantly 
conditioned  by  the  wider  activity  of  God,  and  the  issues 
will  be  the  same  despite  deviations  by  the  way.  This 
constant  conditioning  action  of  God  renders  the  ultimate 
frustration  of  the  Divine  Purpose  impossible.  Spontaneity 
on  any  view  has  narrow  limits,  and  is  embraced  within 
that  larger  working  of  God  which  is  called  Providence. 

It  will  be  evident  that  Omniscience  in  the  end  refers 
back  to  and  finds  support  in  the  conception  of  Omni- 
potence. The  final  issues  are  clear  to  God,  for  the 
elements  from  which  they  proceed  are  all  comprehended 
and  conditioned  by  his  Will.  No  developments  within 
the  universe  can  thwart  God,  for  he  is  omnipresent,  i.e. 
his  Will  is  operative  at  every  point.  Omnipotence, 
Omnipresence,  and  Omniscience  are  thus  interdependent 
attributes  of  the  Being  who  is  the  Ground  of  experience 
and  its  development.  And  though  no  speculative  deduc- 
tion of  the  attributes  can  be  given,  something  is  gained 
if  it  has  been  shown  that  they  can  be  conceived  in  a 
manner  consistent  with  the  idea  of  God  and  his  relation 
to  the  world. 


CHAPTEE  XIII. 

GOD  AS  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL. 

THE  problem  of  the  personality  of  God  is  of  cardinal 
importance  for  a  Philosophy  of  Religion.  The  sense  in 
which  God  is  thought  to  be  'personal'  determines  the 
view  of  the  religious  relation  and  the  conception  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  There  is  a  wide  difference  between 
a  personal  and  an  impersonal  relationship.  Reverence  is 
possible  between  persons,  but  not  between  persons  and 
things.  On  the  level  of  spiritual  religion  the  idea  of 
God  as  personal  and  ethical  is  dominant,  and  this  is  clearly 
expressed  in  the  character  of  the  worship.  Not  mechanical 
service,  but  the  personal  tribute  of  the  heart  and  will 
is  tendered.  The  vitality  of  this  religious  consciousness  is 
bound  up  with  the  conviction  that  the  object  of  reverence 
is  a  personal  Being. 

Of  course  it  will  be  said,  and  said  truly,  that  the 
question  has  already  been  settled  in  a  positive  way  in  the 
foregoing  chapters,  which  try  to  show  that  God  must  be 
conceived  as  Supreme  Mind  and  Will.  God,  it  was 
argued,  must  be  self-conscious ;  and  though  there  is  some- 
thing more  in  personality  than  is  connoted  by  self- 
consciousness,  still  a  being  who  is  self-conscious  can  be 
spoken  of  without  serious  inaccuracy  as  personal.  For 
practical  purposes  the  one  is  often  taken  as  equivalent 
to  the  other.  "  In  calling  him  (God)  personal  I  mean  to 
assert  that  he  is  self-conscious,  that  he  has  that  awareness 
of  his  own  existence  which  I  have  of  my  existence."1  It 
would,  however,  be  more  correct  to  say,  that  in  calling  God 

1  McTaggart,  Some  Dogmas  of  Religion,  p.  186. 
491 


492       GOD  AS  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL 

a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  Being  we  ascribe  to 
him  the  essentials  of  personality.  The  element  of  will  is 
implied  in  the  notion  of  a  personal  subject.  But  while 
the  preceding  discussions  have  been  directed  to  establish 
such  a  view  of  God,  there  are  objections  to  this  view 
which  have  not  been  met  and  difficulties  which  have  not 
been  considered.  It  would  not  be  well  to  pass  these  by ; 
and  in  dealing  with  them,  it  may  be,  we  shall  be  able  to 
define  our  own  position  better  and  to  strengthen  it.  The 
critical  and  sceptical  tendencies  of  modern  thought  render 
it  particularly  desirable,  that  a  religious  philosophy  which 
treats  God  as  personal  should  make  clear  the  reasons  by 
which  it  justifies  itself.  One  can  scarcely  doubt  that 
certain  difficulties  which  attach  to  the  idea  of  personality 
in  God  are  influential  in  keeping  alive  the  agnostic  spirit. 

A  further  point  should  be  noted.  Between  the  notion 
of  personal  and  that  of  ethical  an  intimate  relation  sub- 
sists, and  the  one  implies  the  other.  A  self-conscious 
individual  who  had  neither  ethical  attributes  nor  entered 
into  ethical  relations,  would  not  be  personal  in  the  full 
meaning  of  the  word.  We  cannot  think  of  ethical 
relations  as  real,  unless  they  are  the  expression  of  and  are 
sustained  by  personal  wills.  The  significance  and  value  of 
personality  cannot  be  dissevered  from  the  ethical  element. 
For  the  self  is  thought  and  will  in  an  indissoluble  unity. 

A. — GOD  AS  PERSONAL. 

To  say  God  exists,  is  a  statement  which  does  not  con- 
vey much  to  us,  unless  we  know  what  you  mean  by  God. 
It  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world,  whether  the  Being 
you  call  God  is  simply  an  unconscious  substance,  or  a 
Spirit  who  knows,  wills,  and  loves.  For  a  person  differs 
longo  intervallo  from  a  thing :  a  man  may  reverence  the 
former,  but  he  cannot  worship  the  latter.  Even  in  the 
humblest  form  of  religion  a  thing  must  be  more  than  a 
thing  to  possess  any  religious  value.  A  person  at  the 
lowest  is  for  himself  and  determines  himself :  he  is  not 


GOD   AS   PERSONAL  493 

mechanically  moved  by  something  else.  In  law  the 
distinction  of  person  and  thing,  persona  and  res,  is  clearly 
drawn.  "  A  persona  is  thus  a  human  being,  but  considered 
as  invested  with  a  certain  function  and  social  character ; 
not  a  mere  abstract  human  being,  but  one  having  a  special 
place  in  the  body  politic,  one  who  counts  as  something  in 
the  world."1  With  the  idea  of  a  person  there  goes,  in 
common  parlance,  the  notion  of  certain  rights  and  privi- 
leges; hence  we  speak  of  a  'personal  insult/  meaning 
thereby  an  infringement  of  the  respect  due  to  our  person, 
the  respect  to  which  we  are  entitled ;  and  we  cannot  sepa- 
rate the  conception  of  personality  from  certain  social  and 
ethical  implications.  The  practical  and  volitional  side  of 
personality  is  therefore  important,  and  a  person  properly 
demands  never  to  be  treated  as  a  thing.  A  great  thinker 
summed  up  the  character  and  claims  of  the  ethical  ideal  in 
the  famous  saying :  "Be  a  person,  and  respect  others  as 
persons." 

We  have  often  had  occasion  to  remark  that  the  human 
person  is  the  outcome  of  development.  The  race  slowly 
evolves  personal  selves,  and  the  process  is  repeated  in  the 
individual.  No  one  would  dream  of  calling  the  infant 
1  new  to  earth  and  sky '  a  person  ;  and  the  civilised  man 
would  demur  if  asked  to  regard  the  savage  as  a  personality 
in  the  full  meaning  of  the  term.  In  fact,  man  begins  his 
life  in  the  form  of  an  individual  centre  of  conation  and 
feeling,  and  only  slowly  and  in  a  suitable  environment 
develops  into  a  full-fledged  personality.  Individuality  is  the 
basis  upon  which  personality  evolves,  and  a  man  is  always 
an  individual  ere  he  becomes  a  person.  And  when  we  say 
this  we  make  by  implication  the  admission,  that  the  con- 
cept person  is  not  narrowly  and  precisely  fixed.  We 
cannot  draw  a  hard  and  fast  line  in  the  process  of  growth, 
and  say  all  above  this  is  personal,  all  below  is  impersonal : 
like  many  other  things  personality  is  a  matter  of  degree. 
The  civilised  man  is  more  personal  than  the  semi-civilised, 

1  Wallace,  Lectures  and  Essays  in  Natural  Theology  and  Ethics,  1898, 
p.  267. 


494       GOD  AS  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL 

and  within  the  same  society  the  man  who  conscientiously 
strives  to  realise  what  is  implied  in  his  station  and  its 
duties  is  more  fully  personal  than  the  idle  and  indifferent 
individual 

The  very  fact  that  our  human  conception  of  personality 
has  been  linked  with  social  and  ethical  elements  has  helped 
to  raise  a  doubt  whether  the  idea  can  apply  to  a  Being  who 
transcends  the  conditions  of  human  life.  The  old  dread 
of  anthropomorphism  shows  itself,  and  it  is  argued  with 
some  force,  that  the  factors  which  go  to  the  making  of  a 
human  person  can  have  no  relevancy  to  the  nature  of  God. 
The  point  at  issue  is,  whether  personality  is  not  a  purely 
human  category,  therefore  not  to  be  applied  legitimately 
to  God.  Some  who  say  so  have  tried  to  show  that  the 
notion  of  God  as  a  person  is  a  natural  form  of  representa- 
tion at  a  given  stage  of  social  and  religious  culture,  but  is 
doomed  to  be  transcended  when  men  see  better  the  human 
limitations  which  enter  into  the  idea.  God,  it  is  urged, 
cannot  be  a  One  among  many,  and  a  centre  of  social 
relations  like  a  mundane  person.  For  instance,  when  we 
speak,  in  the  way  that  popular  religion  does,  of  God  for- 
giving, we  indeed  set  him  in  a  personal  relation  to  ourselves ; 
for  the  act  of  forgiveness  is  meaningless  except  between 
persons.  But  we  are  told  that  in  speaking  thus,  we  are 
transferring  ideas  which  develop  out  of  our  social  relations 
to  a  Being  for  whom  these  conditions  are  no  longer  valid. 

Now  it  is  true  that  God,  on  any  showing,  cannot  be 
the  counterpart  of  a  human  person,  a  mere  magnified  man. 
The  transcendent  aspect  of  the  Divine  Nature  precludes 
this  ;  and  besides  there  are  limitations  in  the  personality 
of  man  which  cannot  exist  in  the  Deity.  The  human  self 
labours  under  defects  of  insight  and  memory,  and  its 
personal  life  fails  of  complete  coherency  and  consistency. 
It  never  perfectly  controls  and  penetrates  its  own  content. 
Consequently,  when  we  say  that  Deity  must  be  personal 
in  a  higher  sense  than  man  is,  we  only  state  a  truth  which 
is  demanded  by  the  interests  of  religion  itself.  For  the 
object  of  spiritual  worship  must  be  complete  and  perfect. 


GOD   AS   PERSONAL  495 

From  this  point  of  view  there  is  even  an  element  of  right 
in  the  contention  of  those  who  declare  that  God,  judged 
by  the  human  standard,  is  supra-personal.  On  the  other 
hand,  whatever  God  may  be,  he  must  at  least  be  self- 
conscious  Mind  and  self-determining  Will,  if  he  is  to  be 
the  object  of  personal  reverence  and  love.  The  present 
writer  sympathises  with  the  view,  that  if  God  be  not  „ 
personal,  in  the  sense  of  being  self-conscious  and  self-  , 
determining,  the  whole  development  of  the  religious 
consciousness  in  man  must  be  pronounced  to  be  an 
illusion.  No  doubt  there  are  those  who  are  of  another 
mind,  and  they  are  entitled  to  ask  us  not  to  assume  a 
personal  God.  "  If,  in  the  past  and  the  present,  we  find 
religion  appearing  to  flourish  in  the  absence  of  certain  par- 
ticular doctrines,  it  is  not  a  light  step  to  proclaim  these 
doctrines  as  essential  to  religion.  And  to  do  this  without 
discussion  and  dogmatically,  and  to  begin  one's  work  by 
some  bald  assumption,  perhaps  about  the  necessity  of  a 
'  personal '  God,  is  to  trifle  indecently  with  a  subject  which 
deserves  some  respect." 1  The  warning  against  dogmatism 
is  justified,  but  the  question  remains  whether  religion  does 
flourish  in  the  absence  of  belief  in  a  personal  God.  Surely 
not  among  the  western  peoples  !  as  Positivism,  for  example, 
shows.  No  doubt  there  is  the  impressive  and  conspicuous 
instance  of  Buddhism  among  the  races  of  the  further 
East.  But  a  nihilistic  religion  which,  in  the  course  of 
its  development,  idealises  its  founder  and  practically  turns 
him  into  a  deity,  can  hardly  be  taken  for  a  convincing 
proof  that  a  religion  can  thrive  and  yet  dispense  with  a 
personal  God. 

But  even  though  it  were  made  plain  that  a  vital 
religion  requires  a  personal  Object  of  reverence,  it  does 
not  follow,  it  may  be  said,  that  philosophy  can  endorse 
this  claim.  Not  every  claim  to  truth  is  valid,  and  this 
particular  claim  may  be  the  outcome  of  a  figurative  way 
of  thinking  which  it  is  the  function  of  philosophy  to 
criticise  and  correct.  Thus  there  is  the  standpoint  of  a 

1  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  1st  ed.,  pp.  452-453. 


496  GOD   AS    PERSONAL   AND   ETHICAL 

theologian  like  Biedermann,  who  admits  that  the  religious 
consciousness,  which  works  with  concrete  forms  of  repre- 
sentation, appropriately  depicts  God  in  the  image  of  a 
person.  But  under  the  solvent  of  speculative  thought  this 
image  cannot  maintain  itself,  and  is  replaced  by  the 
notion  of  an  impersonal  Spirit.  Moreover,  we  are  also 
told  that  it  cannot  be  proved  that  a  personal  Deity  is 
necessary  to  the  perfection  of  a  finite  being.1 

Though  these  arguments  may  not  appeal  to  some,  they 
may  appeal  to  others,  and  it  is  well  to  treat  them  seriously. 
We  have  to  ask,  then,  how  the  objections  to  a  personal  God, 
a  God  who  is  self-conscious  and  self-determining,  can  be 
successfully  met.  Now  a  good  deal  of  this  hostile  criticism 
proceeds  from  those  who  hold  the  theory  that  God  is  the 
Absolute,  or  all-embracing  Whole.  German  writers  who 
have  been  influenced  by  Hegel,  such  as  Biedermann  and  Von 
Hartmann,  and  speculative  thinkers  like  Messrs.  Bradley 
and  Bosanquet  in  this  country,  take  the  view  that  person- 
ality involves  a  contrast  and  an  opposition  which  must  be 
transcended  and  transformed  in  the  Absolute.  In  other 
words,  personality  is  a  development  within  the  whole,  a 
development  which  in  the  process  of  its  expansion  towards 
oneness  with  the  Absolute  overpasses  the  conditions  which 
make  it  personal.  Hence  the  Absolute,  though  it  contains 
persons,  is  not  itself  a  person,  but  still  remains  spiritual. 
So  the  inclusive  unity  exists  for  individual  selves,  yet 
these  individual  selves  do  not  exist  for  the  unity.  Never- 
theless, it  is  not  the  case  that  all  those  who  accept,  or  in 
the  main  sympathise  with,  this  speculative  theory,  agree 
in  affirming  the  impersonal  character  of  the  Absolute. 
Hegelians  of  the  Eight  who  identify  God  with  the  Absolute 
speak  of  him  as  personal.  Lotze,  from  another  stand- 
point, has  developed  a  suggestive  argument  to  show  that 
only  in  God  as  Absolute  is  there  complete  personality, 
while  personality  in  man  is  but  a  broken  and  imperfect 
image  of  the  Divine.  Finiteness,  Lotze  insists,  is  not 
the  determining  principle  of  personality,  but  rather  acts 
1  McTaggart,  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology,  p.  74. 


GOD   AS   PERSONAL  497 

in  the  direction  of  restricting  its  full  unfolding;  for 
finitude  spells  incompleteness.  He  then  labours  to  prove 
that  only  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  can  be  the  complete 
person.  It  is  noteworthy  that  a  Personal  Idealist,  Dr. 
Eashdall,  takes  up  a  diametrically  opposite  position  to 
Lotze,  and  declares  that  the  conception  of  an  Infinite 
Being  is  not  compatible  with  the  form  of  personality.1 
The  present  writer,  however,  has  no  call  to  justify  the 
idea  of  a  personal  Absolute,  for,  according  to  the  theory 
defended  in  these  pages,  God  ought  not  to  be  identified 
with  the  philosophic  Absolute.  At  the  same  time  it  is 
well  to  point  out  that,  despite  the  subtlety  and  suggestive- 
ness  of  his  reasoning,  Lotze's  endeavour  to  vindicate  the 
personality  of  the  Absolute  exhibits  certain  defects.  The 
metaphysical  and  ethical  aspects  of  the  theory  are  not 
harmonised :  on  the  metaphysical  side  all  beings  are 
reduced  to  parts  of  the  one  real  Being  or  God,  while  on 
the  ethical  side  a  kind  of  existence  outside  God  is  claimed 
for  individual  spirits.  The  ethical  demand  for  this  is 
evident,  but  the  line  of  thought  by  which  Lotze  establishes 
his  speculative  monism  does  not  seem  to  admit  of  it.  For 
you  cannot  concede  that  which  you  are  not  in  a  condition 
to  give ;  and  if  there  is  only  the  one  Eeality,  the  being 
of  finite  spirits  for  themselves  must  be  merely  an  appear- 
ance. The  position  here  taken  up,  that  God  is  Supreme 
Ground  of  existence  and  Creative  Spirit,  at  least  delivers 
us  from  the  futile  endeavour  to  reconcile  the  personality 
of  the  Whole  with  the  separate  personality  of  its  parts. 
That  Lotze  should  have  thought  this  possible  is  due  to 
the  lingering  influence  upon  him  of  a  speculative  tradition 
with  which,  in  the  main,  he  had  broken. 

But  though  the  abandonment  of  the  all-inclusive  idea 
of  God  has  freed  us  from  one  difficulty,  other  problems 
remain.  In  the  end  these  all  refer  back  to  the  old 
question,  whether  the  idea  of  a  person  does  not  imply  a 
limitation  which,  while  it  may  well  exist  for  men,  cannot 

1  Vid.  his  essay,  "Personality:  Human  and  Divine,"  in  the  vol.  Personal 
Idealism,  p.  392. 


498  GOD   AS   PERSONAL   AND    ETHICAL 

exist  for  God.  The  human  self  is  bounded  and  restricted 
in  a  way  that  the  transcendent  Ground  of  the  world 
cannot  be,  and  it  is  suggested  that  the  Divine  transcen- 
dency involves  a  passing  beyond  the  conditions  under 
which  personality  appears.  In  particular,  it  is  urged  that 
self-consciousness  depends  on  the  contrast  and  opposition 
of  self  and  not-self;  and  while  this  condition  applies  to 
man,  it  cannot  apply  to  God.  For  God  is  not  a  dependent 
and  developing  being,  confronted  always  by  something 
other  than  himself:  he  is  the  fundamental  Eeality,  to 
which  all  other  existences  stand  in  a  relation  of  constant 
dependence.  His  will  does  not  develop  over  against  a 
resisting  environment,  and  his  Self-Consciousness  is 
intrinsic,  not  evolved.  But  to  say  this  is  to  say  there  is 
a  self-conscious  Will  which  is  not  constituted  by  a  relation 
to  something  other  than  itself.  Can  this  conception  be 
maintained  and  defended?  In  this  connexion  an  argu- 
ment of  Lotze's  is  important,  and  if  its  validity  is  assured, 
the  point  of  the  objection  that  has  been  advanced  will 
have  been  removed.1 

Lotze  begins  by  explaining  that  self-consciousness  is 
not  thinkable,  if  the  spiritual  subject  is  not  able  to  form  a 
mental  representation  of  itself  in  its  distinction  from  other 
selves.  As  a  mental  phenomenon  this  image-form  has,  of 
course,  a  psychological  origin  and  conditions.  But  what 
Lotze  makes  clear  is,  that  it  is  not  the  reflexion  or  return 
from  the  not-self  which  creates  the  individual's  self-con- 
sciousness ;  for  an  original,  if  undeveloped,  consciousness  of 
self  is  presupposed  in  the  act  of  distinguishing  the  non-ego 
from  the  ego,  and  forms  the  necessary  basis  for  the  existence 
of  this  contrast.  The  image  of  the  self  is  already  latent  in 
self-feeling,  and  it  is  this  original  self-feeling  which  is  the 
primary  source  of  self-recognition.  Self-recognition,  again, 

1  Lotze's  discussion  of  this  subject  will  be  found  in  his  Grundzilge  der 
Keligionsphilosophie,  pp.  37-46,  and  in  his  Microcosmus,  Eng.  tr.,  vol. 
ii.  pp.  678-687.  J.  G.  Fichte  had  argued  that  the  consciousness  of  self 
depends  on  the  antithesis  of  the  not-self.  In  his  reply  to  this,  Lotze  follows 
the  lead  of  Krause. 


GOD   AS   PERSONAL  499 

makes  possible  the  definition  of  the  not-self.  No  doubt 
developed  self-consciousness  in  man  is  the  outcome  of 
conceptual  thinking,  which  is  mediated  by  intersubjective 
intercourse  within  a  social  system.  But  the  conceptual 
development  posits  an  original  basis  of  self-feeling  on 
which  to  develop;  and  Lotze  is  quite  right  in  saying  that 
the  general  concept  of  self  is  equally  applicable  to  every 
person,  and  affords  no  ground  for  distinguishing  the  /  from 
the  thou  and  the  he.  The  fact  that  within  the  general 
concept  we  do  distinguish  ourselves  from  all  others  rests 
on  a  difference  which  is  immediately  given ;  and  this  is  the 
unique  self-feeling  in  virtue  of  which  we  identify  the  idea 
with  ourselves.  For  the  ego,  as  Lotze  fully  realised,  can- 
not be  reduced  to  the  sum  of  its  relations:  a  centre  of 
immediate  experience  is  the  condition  of  there  being 
relations  at  all. 

If  it  be  granted,  as  I  think  it  must,  that  two  concepts 
cannot  derive  their  whole  meaning  from  the  relations  in 
which  they  stand  to  each  other,  and  that  the  self  is  not 
constituted  by  its  relation  to  the  not-self,  it  remains  to  ask 
what  is  the  function  of  the  non-ego  in  reference  to  the  ego, 
and  what  is  the  bearing  on  the  Divine  Self  of  the  con- 
clusion to  which  we  come.  On  this  point  Lotze's  view  is, 
that  the  position  of  the  self  is  original  and  independent ; 
that  the  ego  becomes  conscious  of  itself,  not  by  reflexion 
from  the  not-self,  but  in  contrast  with  its  own  changing 
states.  He  even  denies  that  in  sensation  and  perception 
we  have  more  than  our  own  inner  states  before  us.  To 
this  the  rejoinder  is  necessary,  that  more  than  these  are 
involved.  Still  in  a  developed  personality  it  is  true  that 
self-consciousness  does  not  depend  on  any  explicit  reference 
to  outward  reality,  and  the  self  is  recognised  as  the  con- 
tinuous identity  which  sustains  its  changing  states  and 
persists  through  them.  On  the  other  hand,  it  by  no  means 
follows  that  the  development  of  the  human  subject  to  self- 
consciousness  could  be  achieved  apart  from  the  mediation 
of  the  non-ego.  That  there  is  a  de  facto  dependence  of 
the  finite  mind  on  stimulus  or  excitation  from  without 


500  GOD   AS   PERSONAL   AND    ETHICAL 

Lotze  grants,  but  he  contends  that  such  dependence  is  not 
to  be  deemed  a  note  of  all  personality.  May  it  not  be  the 
mark  of  finitude  in  selves  that  they  have  to  depend  for 
their  development  on  impressions  and  stimuli  which  come 
to  them  from  without  ?  Lotze  replies  in  the  affirmative, 
and  concludes  that  the  finite  stands  in  need  of  stimulation 
from  the  non-ego  just  because  it  does  not  contain  the  con- 
ditions of  its  own  existence  in  itself.  God,  the  complete 
and  perfect  Personality,  is  independent  of  this  reference  to 
something  beyond  himself.  He  is  self-conditioned,  and 
self-conscious  in  and  for  himself. 

To  this  argument  it  has  been  objected  :  (1)  that,  though 
the  isolated  ego  cannot  be  explained  by  the  non-ego,  it 
does  not  follow  that  the  ego  can  be  explained  without  the 
non-ego ;  (2)  and  the  fact  that  the  ego  is  more  than  its  re- 
lations does  not  prove  that  these  relations  are  not  essential.1 
And  it  is  true  that,  so  far  as  our  human  experience  and 
modes  of  representation  testify,  the  idea  of  the  self  always 
carries  with  it  the  idea  of  the  not-self.  It  is  also  beyond 
dispute,  that  the  development  of  a  human  person  requires 
the  mediation  of  a  reality  other  than  itself  in  the  shape  of 
a  world  of  existences  and  of  other  selves.  But  this  does 
not  prove  that  what  is  essential,  when  certain  conditions 
are  present,  would  be  still  essential  when  these  conditions 
are  absent.  In  other  words,  it  does  not  follow  that  con- 
ditions which  are  implied  in  a  personality  which  develops 
within  a  spatial  and  temporal  world,  would  also  hold  of  a 
perfect  and  complete  Person  who  transcends  the  world. 
We  must  keep  in  mind  the  salient  fact,  that  personality  in 
man  is  and  always  remains  defective,  and  so  cannot  be 
taken  for  the  norm  and  type  of  all  personal  life.  Human 
consciousness  is  not  continuous,  and  the  finite  self  never 
fully  penetrates  its  own  content.  A  vast  deal  of  its 
experience  remains  in  the  region  of  the  subconscious,  and 
can  only  partially  and  intermittently  be  brought  within 
the  focus  of  consciousness.  Some  phases  of  our  experience 
so  fade  into  the  dim  background  of  our  mental  life,  that 

1  McTaggart,  op.  (At.  pp.  67-69. 


GOD   AS   PERSONAL  501 

we  can  no  longer  fully  appreciate  them  and  enter  into  them 
again.  Other  phases,  though  they  continue  living  and 
active,  move  apart  from  the  rest  and  do  not  cohere  with 
the  central  and  dominant  current  of  the  personal  life.  So 
the  '  divided  self '  of  Mysticism.  This  lack  of  complete 
unification  is  further  shown  by  the  possible  disintegration 
of  the  self  under  abnormal  or  pathological  conditions,  as  in 
the  phenomenon  of  multiple  personality.  We  trace  the 
same  defect  in  an  ordinary  feature  of  the  moral  life,  which 
constantly  exhibits  a  conflict  between  the  so-called  higher 
and  lower  self.  These  phenomena  point  to  an  incomplete 
fusion  and  interpenetration  of  the  elements  of  personality. 
And  we  refer  this  imperfection  to  the  fact  that  human 
personality  is  a  process  of  growth,  and  depends  on  the  co- 
operation of  factors  beyond  itself.  But  this  defective 
insight  into  and  control  over  the  elements  which  enter  into 
its  own  life  is  a  matter  of  degree  even  in  the  human  self. 
With  the  increasing  development  of  the  spiritual  activity 
in  the  historic  process,  a  growth  in  personality  is  apparent 
in  mankind,  and  there  is  progress  towards  internal  com- 
pleteness and  consistency.  When  the  spiritual  self-con- 
sciousness of  a  man  is  at  its  highest  level,  the  personal  life 
attains  a  degree  of  inwardness  that  suggests  the  idea  of  a 
world  of  its  own  which  is  relatively  independent  of  external 
impressions.  And  if  personal  development  in  man  is  a 
movement  towards  inner  independence,  the  idea  is  certainly 
admissible  that  in  a  perfect  and  complete  Person,  such  as 
we  suppose  God  to  be,  this  dependence  on  outer  conditions 
no  longer  obtains.  For  God  himself  is  the  ground  and 
sufficient-reason  of  his  own  states  of  consciousness.  It  is 
no  objection  that  we  cannot  form  a  mental  picture  or 
Vorstdlung  of  this  Supreme  Spirit ;  nay  rather,  it  is  what 
we  should  expect.1 

To  say    that    the    foregoing   argument  leads    to    the 
thought,  that  a  God    who   is    a    pure    unity  or    abstract 

1  Rothe,  I  believe,  has  made  the  remark  :  "  Our  power  of  representation 
ceases  when  the  thread  of  analogy  with  our  experience  breaks.  It  would  be 
bad,  indeed,  if  the  power  of  thinking  also  stopped  there." 


502  GOD   AS    PERSONAL   AND   ETHICAL 

identity  could  be  self-conscious  and  personal,  would  be  a 
misconception.  For  God  at  the  least  must  contain  within 
himself  the  differences  which  are  implied  in  the  contrast 
of  changing  states  of  consciousness  with  an  abiding  self. 
An  absolutely  identical  consciousness  is  not  conceivable, 
and  if  it  existed  would  be  without  religious  value.  The 
thought  of  God  as  perfect  Person  is  the  thought  of  a 
spiritual  Self  which  is  fully  self-determined,  and  contains 
within  itself  the  wealth  of  differences  that  are  necessary 
to  a  spiritual  identity. 

The  Deity,  as  we  have  contended  in  an  earlier  chapter, 
is  creative ;  he  can  invest  the  content  of  his  Will  with 
reality,  though  that  reality  always  remains  in  ultimate 
dependence  on  himself.  And  while  God  in  himself  is  a 
self-conscious  Will,  and  does  not  become  such  in  virtue 
of  his  creative  activity,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  man 
can  best  reach  a  living  and  concrete  notion  of  the  Divine 
Personality  through  the  manifestation  and  expression  of 
his  Will  in  the  created  world.  Apart  from  his  self- 
revelation,  God  for  human  thought  tends  to  become  shadowy 
and  elusive.  This  truth  appears  to  be  recognised  in  the 
theological  doctrine  that  God  is  self-revealing,  and  discloses 
himself  in  his  Word  or  Logos.  God  is  apprehended  in 
his  personal  character  through  the  personal  relations  which 
he  is  conceived  to  enter  into  and  maintain  with  the 
world  and  finite  spirits.  To  recognise  personal  character 
in  other  men  we  must  find  the  expression  of  their  wills 
in  action,  and  personal  character  in  the  Divine  Being 
becomes  clear  to  us  in  the  same  way.  God's  character 
for  us  means  his  way  of  acting  towards  us.  When  we 
try  to  represent  God  to  ourselves  in  his  eternal  nature 
apart  from  the  world  and  human  souls,  our  thinking  falls 
back  into  the  region  of  metaphysical  abstractions.  When 
we  strive  to  give  concrete  expression  to  the  meaning  that 
lies  for  us  in  the  phrase  'Personal  God,'  we  perforce 
envisage  its  significance  in  terms  of  those  personal  relations 
by  which  we  think  he  manifests  his  mind  and  will  to  men. 
The  personal  God  is  the  God  whose  Good  purpose  is 


GOD   AS    PERSONAL  503 

revealed  in  that  teleological   order  which   embraces  in   a 
living  unity  the  world   of   existences   and  human  spirits. 
The  higher  religious  idea  of  God  is,  it  may  be  added,  not    . 
metaphysical :  it  is  rather  the  idea  of  a  God  who  reveals  • 
himself  in  and  to  the  souls  of  men,  and  is  active  in  the 
religious  experience  of   the  race.     But  while  God  in  his 
personal    character    is    best    apprehended    by    our    mind 
through   his   self-manifestation,  his  perfect  Personality  is 
the   presupposition   of   this   manifestation,  not    its    result.  & 
God  could  not  reveal  himself  as  personal  unless  he  were 
a  Person. 

Some  speculative  thinkers  who  suffer  from  a  dread  of 
anthropomorphism,  and  yet  hold  firmly  to  the  spiritual 
view  of  the  universe,  argue  that  the  spiritual  can  be 
separated  from  the  personal.  The  Absolute,  we  are  told, 
is  spiritual,  but  is  not  personal.  "  The  Absolute,  although 
not  personal,  is  nevertheless  spiritual,  and  cannot,  there- 
fore, be  out  of  harmony  with  the  most  fundamental 
desires  of  our  own  spirits."  1  One  would  like  to  have  some 
cogent  evidence  that  the  personal  and  spiritual  can  be 
divorced  in  this  fashion.  It  is  not  hard  to  understand 
that,  if  the  philosophic  Absolute  is  all  the  God  there  is, 
there  are  serious  objections  to  associating  with  it  the 
predicate  of  personality.  But  this,  of  course,  does  not 
show  you  can  drop  the  word  personal  and  still  retain  the 
adjective  spiritual.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  there  are 
stages  in  the  evolution  of  mind  which  fall  below  the  level 
of  self-consciousness;  but  it  is  hard  to  suppose  that  a 
spiritual  Absolute  stands  lower  than  its  own  differentiations. 
At  all  events  if  it  does  so,  what  ground  is  there  for  saying 
that  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  "  out  of  harmony  with  the 
most  fundamental  desires  of  our  own  spirits  "  ?  There  can 
be  no  guarantee  that  the  universe  responds  to  the  deepest 
needs  of  self-conscious  spirits,  unless  the  universe  reveals 
a  teleological  order  which  proceeds  from  an  ultimate  and 
self-conscious  Will.  For  man's  fundamental  desires  are 
desires  which  none  but  a  personal  spirit  can  have,  and 

1  McTaggart,  op.  cit.  p.  90. 


504       GOD  AS  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL 

• 

there  is  no  shadow  of  evidence  that  an  impersonal  system 
might  not  conflict  with  these  desires.  The  sole  assurance 
that  the  highest  aspirations  of  man  are  met,  not  frustrated, 
'lies  in  the  principle  that  the  Ground  of  the  World  is  a 
'•  self  -conscious  and  self-determining  Spirit.  The  claim  of 
the  religious  soul  that  its  God  is  personal,  is  not,  therefore, 
merely  a  figurative  and  symbolic  way  of  expressing  its 
inner  need.  The  truth  of  the  religious  experience  itself 
is  bound  up  with  the  conviction  that  God  is  personal ; 
for  religion  cannot  be  true  if  there  is  no  guarantee  that 
its  essential  aspirations  are  not  futile.  Nevertheless,  to 
say  that  God  is  supra-personal  is  not  in  itself  anti-religious. 
It  certainly  is  not  so  if  what  is  meant  is,  that  God  is  per- 
sonal in  a  deeper,  richer,  and  more  perfect  way  than  man  is. 
For  God  is  a  supramundane  and  transcendent  Being :  he 
is  beyond  the  limitations  under  which  a  human  personality 
develops,  and  from  which  it  can  never  completely  escape. 

R — GOD  AS  ETHICAL, 

Of  all  the  factors  operative  in  culture,  Ethics  is  the 
one  which  is  most  intimately  allied  to  religion.  Between 
the  two  there  is  constant  interaction ;  and  to  maintain 
the  validity  of  the  ethical  predicates  which  are  applied 
to  God  is,  without  question,  a  matter  of  the  first  importance 
to  religion.  More  directly  than  the  metaphysical  attributes 
these  are  involved  in  the  practical  working  of  the  developed 
religious  spirit.  It  is  saying  no  more  than  the  truth,  to 
say  that  a  God  without  ethical  qualifications  would  be 
without  religious  value.  The  demand  for  ethical  value 
in  the  Object  of  religious  reverence  springs  from  the  very 
substance  of  the  higher  spiritual  consciousness,  and  an 
enlightened  humanity  could  not  worship  a  non-moral 
Being.  Recent  thought  has  made  us  familiar  with  the 
idea  of  a  realm  which  lies  beyond  good  and  evil.  But 
even  were  this  more  than  fancy,  it  is  none  the  less  true 
that  the  religious  mind  never  transcends  the  distinction 
of  good  and  evil.  In  fact,  the  validity  of  this  distinction 


GOD   AS   ETHICAL  505 

is  implied  in  the  whole  life  and  activity  of  the  religious 
spirit.  Of  course,  as  we  have  explained  at  an  earlier 
stage  of  this  inquiry,  the  religious  mind  does  not  apply 
ethical  qualifications  to  God  by  a  process  of  inference  or 
deduction.  These  are  primarily  postulates  which  embody 
religious  values,  and  they  stand  for  demands  of  the  spiritual 
consciousness.  In  short,  man  does  not  argue  himself  into 
a  belief  in  a  moral  God ;  but  the  whole  spirit  and  tendency 
of  his  religious  life,  when  that  has  reached  the  spiritual 
stage,  imperatively  calls  for  it.  For  the  spiritual  man 
the  character  of  the  religious  experience  ensures  the 
validity  of  the  demand.  The  great  and  enduring  con- 
tribution which  the  Hebrew  prophets  made  to  the  religious 
evolution  of  the  race  was,  that  they  set  forth  with  un- 
surpassed force  their  conviction  that  Jahveh  was  a 
righteous  and  holy  God. 

But  a  Philosophy  of  Eeligion  has  to  discuss  the 
truth  of  religion,  and  it  has  not  discharged  its  full 
function  if  it  merely  describes  and  explains  what  the 
religious  consciousness  postulates  and  finds  to  be  essential 
to  its  own  working.  It  must  at  least  critically  examine 
the  statement,  that  the  moral  point  of  view  is  purely 
a  human  point  of  view,  and  ceases  to  be  relevant  in 
relation  to  a  Being  who  transcends  the  mundane  order 
of  things.  Other  problems  which  may  arise  are  the 
coherency  of  the  different  ethical  predicates  affirmed  of 
God,  and  the  precise  relation  in  which  the  Good  stands 
to  the  Divine  Will.  These  and  other  points  call  for 
mention  at  this  stage.  And  I  shall  begin  with  the 
radical  objection  that  God  is  a  Being  who  is  supra-moral, 
hence  not  to  be  clothed  with  ethical  qualities  drawn  from 
human  experience. 

First  of  all,  let  me  refer  very  briefly  to  the  attitude 
of  those  who  identify  God  with  the  Absolute.  The 
Absolute,  which  includes  everything,  must  include  evil 
as  well  as  good.  On  this  theory  you  cannot  say  that 
moral  evil  is  entirely  wrong  and  ought  not  to  be :  at 
the  worst  it  is  good  in  the  wrong  place,  and  good  and 


506  GOD   AS   PERSONAL   AND    ETHICAL 

evil  are  both  transformed  in  the  Absolute.1  Inasmuch, 
then,  as  the  Absolute  transcends  the  opposition  of  good 
and  evil,  it  can  be  properly  called  supra-moral.  On  these 
premisses  it  is  fair  to  conclude,  as  E.  von  Hartmann 
does,  that  there  are  three  stages  of  evolution,  the  natural, 
the  moral,  and  the  supra-moral.  In  the  order  of  develop- 
ment, therefore,  morality  points  beyond  itself,  and  reaches 
its  goal  in  the  Absolute,  where  moral  values  are  transcended. 
An  Absolute  so  conceived  can  only  be  called  good  in 
the  sense  that  it  is  a  metaphysically  perfect  structure : 
it  cannot  be  characterised  by  moral  goodness  as  such. 
For  the  moral  point  of  view  in  the  last  resort  is  abstract 
and  partial,  and  things  only  appear  to  be  good  and  evil 
to  our  limited  outlook.  If  we  accept  the  main  principle 
of  Absolutism  we  have  no  good  reason  to  quarrel  with 
the  result,  though  that  result  is  not  consistent  with  the 
world-view  of  ethical  and  spiritual  religion. 

The  theistic  theory  developed  in  these  pages  does  not 
require  us  to  spend  our  strength  in  trying  to  reconcile 
Absolutism  with  ethical  religion.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  transcendency  of  God  has  appeared  to  some  a  reason 
for  doubting  his  ethical  character.  What  has  been  said 
in  the  case  of  personality  has  been  said  in  the  case  of 
ethical  qualities.  Objection  has  been  taken  to  the  anthro- 
pomorphism which,  it  is  contended,  is  involved  in  apply- 
ing them  to  God.  From  the  naive  standpoint  it  is 
natural,  and  perhaps  unavoidable,  to  predicate  goodness 
and  holiness  of  God,  but  it  will  not  bear  the  brunt  of 
criticism.  The  attributes  we  thus  employ  have  meaning 
in  the  sphere  of  human  relations,  but  lose  their  meaning 
when  transferred  to  a  Eeality  beyond  them.  When  we 
speak  of  a  moral  God,  we  make  God  too  much  a  man. 

In  reply,  we  may  admit  at  the  outset,  that  theologians 
have  sometimes  been  uncritical  in  their  procedure.  For 
example,  to  say  there  is  an  opposition  of  justice  and 
grace  in  the  Divine  Nature,  is  to  suppose  that  what  may 
be  true  in  an  imperfect  human  character  can  obtain  in 

1  Cp.  Bosanquet's  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  215-217. 


GOD   AS   ETHICAL  507 

a  divine  and  perfect  Personality.  And  in  general  we 
must  remember  moral  values  cannot  have  precisely  the 
same  significance  in  God  which  they  have  in  man.  But 
this  concession  by  no  means  satisfies  our  opponents,  and 
the  demands  they  make  are  much  more  radical.  Perhaps 
the  substance  of  this  hostile  criticism  might  be  put  thus. 
Goodness  has  no  meaning  apart  from  evil :  the  one  idea 
is  the  indispensable  correlative  of  the  other.  Hence 
good  always  supposes  some  limitation,  some  resistance 
to  be  overcome :  what  offers  opposition  we  call  evil, 
and  what  overcomes  it  good.  Consequently  the  sphere 
in  which  ethical  qualities  play  a  part  is  the  sphere  in 
which  individuals  develop  through  the  conquest  of  opposing 
elements ;  and  when  we  pass  beyond  the  region  of  struggle 
and  development,  we  pass  beyond  the  region  where 
ethical  qualities  are  significant  and  valid. 

In  answering  this  argument  let  us  repeat  that  the 
ethical  attributes  of  God  must  have  a  deeper  and  richer 
meaning  than  the  same  qualities  in  man.  Goodness  in 
man  is  something  which  has  been  gradually  and  strenuously 
evolved;  in  God  it  must  be  intrinsic.  That  is  to  say, 
we  cannot  think  of  the  Divine  Being  making  himself 
good  in  virtue  of  his  purposive  action ;  to  fchis  extent 
the  analogy  of  a  being  who  develops  morally  by  acting 
according  to  ends  is  defective.1  Nevertheless  we  can 
fairly  maintain  the  ethical  Good  to  be  the  fundamental 
moral  category,  and  only  in  relation  to  it  can  evil  be 
determined  as  evil.  For  the  norm  or  law  is  the  prior 
condition,  and  defines  and  conditions  the  idea  of  a 
departure  from  it.  A  fundamental  principle  of  goodness 
is  therefore  the  condition  of  a  good  developing  in  the 
world  over  against  evil.  But  now  we  are  confronted 
with  a  problem  discussed  by  the  Scholastics  and  also  by 
later  theologians.  Is  the  good  good  merely  because  God 
wills  it  ?  or  does  God  will  it  because  it  is  good  ?  If 

1  On  the  whole  subject  the  reader  may  compare  with  what  is  said  above 
the  acute  remarks  of  E.  A.  Lipsius  in  his  Christliche  Dogmatik,  2nd  ed.. 
1879,  pp.  261-267. 


508       GOD  AS  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL 

we  say  the  good  is  constituted  by  an  arbitrary  act  of 
the  Divine  Will,  we  commit  ourselves  to  the  statement 
that  goodness  is  not  the  intrinsic  character  of  the  Deity. 
And  we  involve  ourselves  in  the  objectionable  consequence, 
that  Deity,  by  a  like  act  of  will,  could  have  made  evil 
good.  But  if  we  say  God  wills  the  good  because  it  is 
good,  then  we  assert  the  priority  of  good  to  God  himself. 
Neither  supposition  is  tenable.  The  only  way  out  of 
this  dilemma  is  to  say  the  essential  nature  of  God  is 
self-conscious  Will,  and  this  Will  is  intrinsically  good. 
We  thus  evade  the  anti-religious  alternatives  of  affirming 
the  good  to  be  higher  than  God,  or  of  making  it  a  mere 
creation  of  his  will 

When  we  have  come  thus  far  we  have  come  far 
enough  to  discern  wherein  lies  the  limitation  of  the 
human  analogy.  For  the  will  to  good  in  man  is  never 
perfect  and  complete.  A  perfectly  good  will  is  an  ideal 
towards  which  the  human  self  develops;  and  develops 
through  the  slow  and  hard  process  of  subduing  the  lower 
motives  and  impulses.  Hence  goodness  in  man  is  ever 
the  fruit  of  struggle  and  conquest,  and  the  process  of 
striving  towards  it  never  ends  in  full  realisation.  In 
contrast  to  this  partial  attainment  the  goodness  we  ascribe 
to  God  is  perfect;  it  is  characterised  by  no  defect  and 
therefore  admits  of  no  progress.  Nor  can  we  identify 
the  ethical  goodness  of  God  with  his  metaphysical  perfec- 
tion, with  perfection  of  structure,  although  the  former  may 
imply  the  latter ;  for  there  is  a  quality  in  the  ethical 
will  which  is  not  exhausted  by  the  metaphysical  nature. 
Here  the  thread  of  the  human  analogy  begins  to  fail  us. 
In  truth,  we  cannot  make  fully  intelligible  to  ourselves, 
through  our  human  modes  of  representation,  the  ethical 
goodness  of  the  transcendent  God.  Perhaps  the  least 
misleading  analogy  would  be  the  good-will  in  man  which 
has  so  approximated  to  the  ideal,  that  evil  has  well-nigh 
ceased  to  exercise  an  influence  over  it.  In  other  words, 
the  thought  of  a  will  to  good  in  man  which  has  become 
consolidated  in  character.  Yet  here  again  we  labour 


GOD   AS   ETHICAL  509 

under  the  defect  of  trying  to  conceive  what  is  inherently 
perfect  through  the  image  of  something  which  is  the 
outcome  of  development.  There  is  the  same  difficulty, 
then,  with  the  ethical  as  with  the  personal  predicate 
when  it  is  applied  to  God :  we  cannot  completely 
apprehend  the  mode  of  its  existence  in  a  Being  who 
transcends  the  world.  But  whatever  element  of  perplexity 
attaches  to  the  problem  regarded  from  our  human  point 
of  view,  the  perplexity  would  be  far  greater  if  we  had 
to  explain  how  an  ethical  world-order  issued  from  an 
impersonal  and  non-moral  source.  The  ultimate  in- 
explicability  of  this,  taken  along  with  the  positive  demands 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  is  our  final  justification 
for  affirming  that  God  is  a  perfect  personal  and  ethical 
Spirit.  This  postulate  makes  our  moral  experience  intel- 
ligible and  guarantees  the  validity  of  the  moral  ideal. 

In  the  case  of  God's  personality  we  have  seen  that  this 
becomes  real  and  living  to  our  minds  through  the  personal 
relations  into  which  he  is  conceived  to  enter  with  men. 
So  likewise  with  the  ethical  attributes  of  Deity ;  the 
religious  man  apprehends  them  in  a  concrete  way  because 
he  finds  them  revealed  in  the  ethical  order  of  the  world. 
Apart  from  such  a  manifestation,  goodness  and  righteous- 
ness in  a  transcendent  Being  remain  for  us  abstract  ideas 
with  little  power  to  evoke  our  interest  or  sympathy.  The 
righteousness  of  God  is  real  and  significant  to  us,  because 
we  think  of  him  as  the  Power  in  the  world  that  makes  for 
righteousness.  To  realise  intimately  that  God  is  a  moral 
personality,  we  must  think  of  him  sustaining  the  moral 
order  of  experience.  Prompted  by  its  own  deepest  needs, 
the  religious  spirit  demands  an  ethical  God.  The  demand 
in  its  essence  is  practical :  it  means  the  call  for  a  God 
who  maintains  ethical  relations  with  men,  and  works  for 
good  in  the  world.  If  we  suppose  there  is  no  immanent 
working  of  God  in  the  world  of  our  experience,  his  ethical 
attributes  of  goodness,  righteousness,  and  love  become 
isolated  qualities  rather  than  living  characteristics  which 
evoke  our  affections  and  move  our  wills.  Hence  it  is  that 


510       GOD  AS  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL 

the  higher  spiritual  religion — and  especially  the  Christian 
religion — lays  the  greatest  stress  on  the  thought,  that  the 
character  of  God  is  known  through  the  way  in  which  he 
reveals  himself.  If  Christian  faith,  for  instance,  proclaims 
that  God  is  love,  it  does  not  do  so  on  general  grounds  of 
reason :  it  rests  its  assurance  on  the  historic  manifestation 
of  God  redeeming  and  reconciling  men  unto  himself.  The 
Christian  has  a  living  notion  of  God  as  love,  because  he  be- 
lieves that  God  has  made  known  his  love.  Similarly  the  holi- 
ness and  righteousness  of  God  are  brought  into  close  relation 
with  God's  revelation  in  Christ.  For  human  powers  the 
discussion  of  the  ethical  attributes  of  God  will  always 
prove  a  rather  futile  task,  unless,  and  in  so  far  as,  they 
can  be  regarded  as  ways  in  which  he  manifests  himself. 

Hence  the  function  of  a  Philosophy  of  Keligion  is  a 
somewhat  limited  one,  so  far  as  the  ethical  attributes  are 
concerned.  Proof  is  out  of  the  question,  and  philosophy 
must  here  be  critical  rather  than  constructive.  Yet  the 
critical  function  in  such  a  matter  is  by  no  means  without 
value,  for  it  may  help  to  purify  faith  from  lower  elements. 
The  popular  mind  mistakes  images  for  the  truth,  and 
human  thought  readily  falls  into  illegitimate  anthropomor- 
phism. A  Philosophy  of  Religion  can  exercise  criticism 
here,  and  do  something  to  ensure  that  ethical  qualities 
which  are  applied  to  God  are  compatible  with  the 
theistic  idea  and  consistent  with  one  another.  A  service 
of  this  sort  is  by  no  means  negligible.  A  religious 
philosophy  which  offers  this  service  does  something  to 
promote  a  consistent  conception  of  the  God  whom  spiritual 
religion  demands,  a  God  fully  personal  and  truly  ethical. 

To  sum  up  the  result  of  this  discussion.  Personal  and 
ethical  character,  as  they  are  developed  in  man,  involve 
certain  limitations.  But  these  limitations  are  not  necessarily 
involved  in  the  conception  of  personality  and  of  ethical 
character :  they  are  due  to  the  imperfect  form  in  which 
personality  and  ethical  character  are  realised  under  the 
conditions  of  mundane  experience.  Just  because  these  con- 
ditions cannot  apply  to  God,  there  is  no  inconsistency  in 


GOD   AS   ETHICAL  511 

thinking  of  him  as  a  perfect  ethical  Personality.  On  the 
other  hand,  because  of  the  human  limitations  to  which  we 
are  subject,  the  living  knowledge  of  what  God  is  as  a  per- 
fect ethical  Personality  is  only  possible  for  us  through  the 
personal  and  ethical  relations  which  God  maintains  with 
men  in  the  experience  of  spiritual  religion. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 
THE  PKOBLEM  OF  EVIL. 

A. — THE  EISE  OF  THE  PROBLEM. 

IN  the  lower  levels  of  culture  the  existence  of  evil  does  not 
constitute  a  problem  for  man.  He  accepts  the  presence  of 
evil  in  his  environment  without  asking  whether  such  a 
condition  of  things  could  have  been  avoided.  His  main 
and  pressing  concern  is  to  evade  or  overcome  the  evils 
which  threaten  him  in  his  struggle  for  existence ;  for  the 
existence  of  evil  in  general  he  has  no  eye.  The  growth  of 
reflexion,  the  formation  of  the  idea  of  a  world-system  and 
a  social  order,  provoked  inquiry  into  the  origin  and 
meaning  of  evil  within  this  order.  Why  did  a  fact  so 
disconcerting  intrude  into  the  world,  bringing  misery  in  its 
train  and  thwarting  human  endeavour  ?  Here,  as  in  many 
other  matters,  it  is  easier  to  ask  questions  than  to  answer 
them ;  and  this  question  is  particularly  hard.  To  explain 
evil  would  be  in  some  fashion  to  rationalise  it,  and  so  to 
take  the  sting  out  of  it.  There  is  a  saying  of  Lotze's  in 
his  Microcosmus,  which  is  often  quoted,  and  it  will  bear 
repetition.  "  No  one,"  he  says,  "  has  here  found  the  thought 
which  would  save  us  from  our  difficulty,  and  I  too  know 
it  not." l  But  while  a  full  explanation  in  the  nature  of 
the  case  is  impossible,  a  careful  discussion  of  the  problem 
will  shed  a  certain  amount  of  light  upon  it.  "  The  eye  by 
long  use,"  says  Berkeley,  "comes  to  see  in  the  darkest 
cavern ;  and  there  is  no  subject  so  obscure  but  we  may 
discern  some  glimpse  of  truth  by  long  poring  on  it."  And 

1  Op.  cit.t  Eng.  tr.,  vol.  ii.  p.  716. 
612 


THE   RISE   OF   THE   PROBLEM  513 

the  meaning  of  evil  is  certainly  a  question  where,  at  the 
most,  we  can  hope  for  glimpses  of  truth,  not  for  a  finished 
and  fully  established  understanding. 

To  our  human  experience,  evil  is  essentially  relative  to 
good ;  to  think  of  a  virtue  is  to  presuppose  a  vice  as  its 
counterpart,  and  the  two  ideas  imply  one  another.  If 
good  develops  within  the  system  of  culture,  so  does  evil ; 
and  while  virtue  enters  on  new  phases,  vice  assumes  fresh 
forms.  This  close  connexion  of  good  and  evil  is  fully 
experienced  by  the  religious  consciousness ;  and  the  good 
which  religion  yields  man  is  sharply  contrasted  with  the 
evils  which  hurt  him.  Whether  in  the  form  of  deliverance 
from  physical  ills  or  of  redemption  from  moral  evils,  man 
has  sought  help  and  strength  from  religion  in  his  struggle 
with  the  opposing  forces.  His  conception  of  the  evils  by 
which  he  was  confronted  naturally  served  to  determine  the 
notion  of  the  meaning  of  religion  and  of  the  religious  relation. 
In  primitive  culture  material  evils  are  exclusively  in  view, 
and  the  religion  which  is  thought  to  deliver  from  these  is 
conceived  in  a  material  fashion.  Nor  does  the  savage  find 
any  difficulty  in  explaining  to  himself  the  raison  d'etre  of 
the  evils  which  beset  him.  The  goods  and  evils  of  life 
have  their  corresponding  sources  in  the  spirit  world ;  and 
if  there  are  beneficent  spirits  who  are  able  and  willing  to 
help  man,  there  are  also  malignant  spirits  to  whose  hostile 
action  may  be  traced  the  ills  of  the  human  lot.  So  primi- 
tive man  carries  over  the  contrast  of  good  and  evil  into  the 
world  of  divine  powers.  The  same  principle  is  worked 
out  in  a  more  developed  way  by  polytheistic  religion. 
The  conception  of  the  unity  of  the  world  still  remains  in 
the  background,  and  the  departments  of  nature  and  its 
various  forces  have  their  own  counterparts  in  the  world  of 
the  gods.  The  forces  in  nature  which  cause  man  pain  and 
loss,  which  undo  his  work  and  hamper  his  purposes,  are 
conceived  to  be  under  the  dominion  of  evil  deities ;  and  the 
same  deity,  here  reflecting  the  inconsistency  of  his  human 
worshippers,  may  at  one  time  be  active  for  good  and 
at  another  for  evil. 


514  THE    PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

Up  to  this  point  we  may  say  that  evil  has  not  become 
a  specific  problem  for  human  thought.  Men  speak  of 
evils  rather  than  of  evil,  and  they  do  not  find  any 
difficulty  in  supposing  these  proceed  from  evil  gods. 
Hence  there  is  nothing  in  early  man's  idea  of  nature  and 
religion  to  make  evil  hard  to  understand.  A  change  in 
the  outlook  is  gradually  brought  about  by  the  growing 
sense  of  the  order  and  unity  of  the  world  which  marks 
the  transition  to  a  monotheistic  faith,  or  to  a  monistic 
conception  of  the  universe.  When  man  has  gained  some 
notion  of  an  order  which  embraces  all  parts  of  nature,  he 
can  hardly  help  asking  the  meaning  and  origin  of  those 
forces  which  conflict  with  and  thwart  this  order.  The 
ancient  Religion  of  Persia  was  a  striking  attempt  to  solve 
this  question  by  tracing  the  antagonism  back  to  the  first 
principles  of  things.  The  conflict  of  good  and  evil,  at  first 
conceived  in  a  purely  natural  way  and  represented  by  the 
warfare  of  the  God  of  Light  against  the  God  of  Darkness, 
was  thought  to  run  through  and  explain  the  history  of  the 
world.  The  dualism  embodied  in  the  idea  of  the  perpetual 
battle  between  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  the  God  of  Good 
and  the  God  of  Evil,  was  only  faintly  qualified  by  the 
hope  for  the  final  victory  of  the  Good.  The  Persian 
Religion  shows  us  man  at  the  stage  when  he  has  uni- 
versalised  the  ideas  of  Good  and  Evil ;  but  a  final  dualism 
of  this  kind  means  a  conception  of  the  universe  unsatisfy- 
ing and  incoherent. 

A  monotheistic  creed  is  not  consistent  with  dualism ; 
and  it  is  for  monotheistic  religion  that  the  problem  of  evil 
is  defined  most  sharply  and  becomes  most  urgent.  The 
order  of  the  universe,  physical  and  spiritual,  is  now  traced 
to  the  will  of  a  single  Being  supposed  to  be  good,  and  it 
is  a  matter  of  much  moment  to  understand  the  origin  of 
those  jarring  elements  which  disturb  the  general  harmony. 
Who  is  responsible  for  these  discordant  elements  ?  Can 
the  recurring  ills  of  experience  be  reconciled  with  the 
religious  postulate  from  which  we  set  out  ?  Can  human 
suffering  and  loss  be  shown  to  be  bound  up  with  a  larger 


THE   RISE   OF   THE   PROBLEM  515 

good  ?  This  is  the  problem  which  is  stated  in  a  vivid  and 
impressive  way  by  the  Hebrew  mind  in  the  ancient  drama 
known  as  the  Book  of  Job.  The  harsh  fortune  and  the 
pitiful  case  of  the  patriarch  of  Uz  become  a  challenge  to 
justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man.  As  the  drama  proceeds 
various  solutions  are  put  forward,  but  when  the  close 
comes  no  satisfying  answer  has  been  given.  The  problem 
once  raised  continues ;  and  it  reappears  in  the  Christian 
Keligion,  where  it  is  regarded  in  a  new  and  more  hopeful 
light.  In  the  practical  working  of  the  Christian  conscious- 
ness as  it  derives  from  Christ,  sin  and  suffering  are 
always  related  to  salvation,  and  the  redemptive  function 
of  religion  is  emphasised.  Evil  is  in  the  world  and 
abounds ;  but  it  can  be  overcome,  for  God  is  with  men, 
and  his  spiritual  power  is  supreme.  But  while  this  note 
of  practical  hopefulness  marks  the  Christian's  faith,  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  doctrinal  treatment  of  the 
problem  of  evil  is  free  of  difficulties.  As  a  legacy  from 
an  elder  stage  of  religious  thought,  there  survives  in 
theology  the  notion  of  a  personal  Power  of  Evil  who 
fights  against  the  Good.  It  is  obvious  enough  that  such  a 
conception  creates  fresh  perplexities  instead  of  solving  old 
ones.  Nor  is  the  story  of  the  Fall,  with  the  impossible 
importance  which  it  assigns  to  a  particular  act,  any  real 
explanation  of  the  origin  of  evil.  As  has  been  said,  the 
story  exhibits  to  us  a  typical  case  of  sinning,  but  does  not 
carry  us  further.  Moreover,  the  total  corruption  of  human 
nature  is  not  consistent  with  human  experience  ;  nor,  if  it 
were  consistent,  could  it  be  explained  in  the  way  suggested. 
The  general  diffusion  of  evil  has  forced  the  philo- 
sophical theologian  to  seek  some  wider  ground  of 
explanation.  Hints  towards  this  are  to  be  found  in  Plato, 
who  saw  his  ideal  realm  confronted  with  the  discords  of 
real  life.  To  account  for  this  he  suggested  that  the 
material  factor  in  the  world  is  not  perfectly  tractable  to 
the  idea,  and  in  the  form  of  the  human  body  stirs  up 
wrong  passions  and  moral  disorders.  Neo-Platonism,  as 
it  is  represented  by  Plotinus,  follows  out  these  hints  of 


516  TBE    PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

Plato,  and  in  a  more  positive  and  definite  way  connects 
evil  with  matter.  Matter  denotes  the  limit  where  form 
passes  into  the  formless,  light  into  darkness,  and  it  is 
the  original  source  of  evil  (irpwrov  /cateov).  Evil  which 
exists  in  the  human  body  is  a  derivative  product.  The 
same  idea  that  evil  is  inherent  in  matter  was  taught  by 
the  Gnostics,  among  whom  we  also  find  the  suggestion 
that  it  was  due  to  the  imperfect  agents  whom  the  Highest 
God  employed  in  the  work  of  creation.  Augustine,  again, 
traced  sin  to  a  general  perversion  of  the  human  will, 
issuing  in  a  total  depravity  of  human  nature.  The 
connexion  of  evil  with  man's  will  was  developed  by  the 
theologians  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  problem  was  how 
to  avoid  making  God  responsible  for  the  fact  of  sin  in  the 
world.  The  Scholastic  theologians  assumed  that  man  was 
originally  created  good  ;  at  present  he  was  admittedly  bad. 
How  did  he  become  other  than  he  was  when  created  ? 
Must  he  not  always  give  expression  to  the  nature  with 
which  he  was  endowed  ?  The  solution  was  found  by 
postulating  a  metaphysical  act  of  free-will  by  which  man 
changed  the  nature  with  which  he  had  been  gifted  at  the 
first.  The  theory  which  connects  moral  evil  with  human 
freedom  has  been  influential  in  theology,  but  it  has  not 
been  universally  accepted  by  theologians.  Among  the 
Keformers,  for  instance,  Calvin  maintained  the  doctrine  of 
theological  determinism,  for  it  was  the  doctrine  which  was 
consistent  with  his  view  of  Predestination. 

The  modern  attitude  on  this  problem,  like  other 
problems,  has  been  greatly  influenced  by  the  prevailing 
conception  of  evolution.  So  the  question  has  assumed  a 
wider  scope  :  instead  of  merely  asking  how  evil  is  to  be 
understood  as  a  feature  in  the  existing  situation,  the 
modern  thinker  tries  to  understand  it  as  part  of  a  develop- 
ment. He  strives  to  show  that  the  elements  of  evil  which 
play  a  part  in  the  growing  life  of  the  individual  and  the 
race  are  more  intelligible  when  studied  in  their  bearing  on 
the  evolutionary  process.  And  no  doubt  it  is  often  help- 
ful to  regard  the  problem  in  this  light.  Some  things 


NATURAL  AND  MORAL  EVIL          517 

which  are  certainly  evil  in  a  given  situation  and  for  a 
particular  individual,  when  seen  in  the  larger  perspective 
of  racial  development,  are  recognised  to  work  for  good  on 
the  whole.  Hitherto  we  have  spoken  of  evil  or  evils,  but 
before  going  further  it  is  essential  to  draw  a  distinction  in 
order  that  the  discussion  may  be  clear  and  profitable.  We 
must  distinguish  between  natural  and  moral  evil. 

B. — NATURAL  AND  MORAL  EVIL. 

According  to  the  old  theological  doctrine,  moral  evil 
came  first  in  time,  and  natural  evil  was  added  as  a  penalty 
for  human  transgression.  '  Death  and  all  our  woe  '  were 
the  fruits  '  of  man's  first  disobedience/  This  is  a  reversal 
of  the  right  order.  Natural  evil  was  in  the  world  and 
abounded  before  sin  was  known.  Broadly  speaking,  we 
term  natural  evils  the  evils  which  are  involved  in  the 
course  of  nature,  and  affect,  not  only  man,  but  all  other 
finite  creatures  as  well.  Moral  evils,  again,  are  those 
which  spring,  directly  or  indirectly,  from  the  exercise  of 
the  human  will,  and  are  made  possible  by  the  activity  of 
conscious  beings.  On  the  face  of  it,  to  identify  these  two 
kinds  of  evil  would  be  a  grave  mistake,  though  a  little 
consideration  shows  there  is  a  connexion,  more  or  less 
close,  between  them.  But  while  it  is  not  absurd  to 
argue  that  man  is  responsible  for  the  existence  of  moral 
evil,  it  is  absurd  to  say  he  is  responsible  for  natural  evil. 

Let  me  preface  some  remarks  on  natural  evils  by 
quoting  a  few  sentences  from  J.  S.  Mill's  well-known 
essay  on  "  Nature."  "  In  sober  truth,  nearly  all  the  things 
for  which  men  are  hanged  or  imprisoned  for  doing  to  one 
another,  are  Nature's  everyday  performances.  Killing,  the 
most  criminal  act  recognised  by  human  laws,  Nature  does 
once  to  every  being  that  lives.  .  .  .  Next  to  taking 
life  ...  is  taking  the  means  by  which  we  live ;  and 
Nature  does  this  on  the  largest  scale  and  with  the  most 
callous  indifference.  A  single  hurricane  destroys  the 
hopes  of  a  season ;  a  flight  of  locusts  or  an  inundation 


518  THE   PROBLEM   OF   EVIL 

desolates  a  district ;  a  trifling  chemical  change  in  an 
edible  root  starves  a  million  of  people." *  Though 
Mill's  picture  may  be  highly  coloured,  no  one  doubts 
that  the  operation  of  so-called  natural  laws  entails  many 
evils.  These  evils  are  spread  alike  through  the  human 
and  sub-human  or  animal  worlds,  and  this  fact  must  not 
be  forgotten.  A  theory,  for  instance,  which  explained 
death  as  a  consequence  of  human  transgression,  breaks 
down  when  confronted  with  the  universal  reign  of  death 
in  the  animal  world.  Pain,  disease,  and  death,  these 
great  natural  ills,  fall  to  the  lot  of  all  living  creatures, 
and  are  the  cause  of  the  most  varied  forms  and  degrees  of 
suffering.  Nor  can  this  be  said  to  be  merely  an  accidental 
result  of  the  mode  in  which  nature  works.  These  evils 
appear  to  be  bound  up  with  the  structure  and  organisation 
of  the  natural  world.  Implicated  with  life  is  susceptibility 
to  pain,  and  in  all  organic  process  elements  are  present 
which  make  for  dissolution.  Nature  herself  produces 
freely  the  bacilli  which  carry  far  and  wide  the  germs  of 
disease  and  death.  She  has  created  a  multitude  of 
creatures,  and  equipped  them  with  organs,  that  they  may 
prey  on  other  living  things  and  flourish  by  killing  and 
devouring  them.  Man  himself  thrives  on  the  flesh  of  the 
animals  he  has  slain  to  satisfy  his  hunger.  Hence  the 
well-being  of  some  means  the  suffering  and  death  of 
other  forms  of  life.  Moreover,  the  'laws  of  nature'  in 
the  course  of  their  working  occasionally  cause  dire  havoc. 
The  tidal  wave,  the  volcanic  outburst,  the  earthquake, 
sometimes  deal  destruction  to  thousands  of  human  lives, 
and  leave  appalling  misery  in  their  train.  In  presence 
of  such  catastrophes,  or  watching  the  slower  ravages  of 
some  malignant  disease,  men  inevitably  ask  themselves 
how  it  is  possible  to  find  an  element  of  good  in  what 
seems  so  utterly  bad.  If  they  are  told  these  visitations 
work  for  good  in  the  long  run,  they  ask,  for  the  good  of 
whom  ?  Does  such  suffering  benefit  the  people  themselves 
or  those  who  come  after  them  ? 

1  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  1885,  pp.  28,  30. 


NATURAL  AND  MORAL  EVIL          519 

Perhaps  the  chief  difficulty  created  by  natural  evils  of 
experience  concerns  the  mode  of  their  distribution.  To 
one  who  looks  out  on  the  world  assuming  that  it  is  the 
manifestation  of  a  moral  order,  it  seems  impossible  to 
affirm  that  these  ills  are  apportioned  among  human 
beings  in  accordance  with  any  principle  of  justice. 
Adversity  and  prosperity  often  bear  little  relation  to 
character,  and,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Psalmist,  the  wicked 
sometimes  flourish  '  like  a  green  bay  tree.'  The  vagaries 
of  fortune  are  proverbial.  The  man  of  genius  is  cut  off 
in  the  freshness  of  his  youth  ere  his  gifts  have  ripened, 
while  the  dull  and  commonplace  person  is  spared  to  a 
good  old  age :  the  industrious  father  of  a  family  is  smitten 
down  by  disease  when  his  help  could  least  be  spared, 
while  the  selfish  idler  enjoys  excellent  health.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  multiply  instances,  for  every  one  can  furnish 
them  from  his  own  knowledge  of  life.  The  stress  of  the 
problem  begins  to  be  felt  when  you  try  to  find  some 
meaning,  some  element  of  good,  in  particular  cases.  To 
show  that  death  as  a  universal  principle  operates  for  the 
well-being  of  humanity  does  not  make  it  plain  why  the 
honest  man  should  be  laid  low  in  the  fulness  of  his  service, 
and  the  profligate  spared  to  continue  in  his  sin.  The 
general  principle  sheds  little  light  on  particular  instances. 

Natural  evils  are  closely  related  to  moral  evils,  and 
they  furnish  the  occasion  for  the  development  of  the 
latter.  Hunger,  want,  pain,  indeed  suffering  in  all  its 
phases,  stimulate  the  self  to  activity,  and  where  these 
reactions  bear  a  distinctive  character,  moral  evil  emerges. 
Had  there  been  no  natural  evils  felt  by  the  self,  there 
would  have  been  no  moral  transgression,  for  the  will 
would  have  lacked  the  incitement  to  do  wrong.  Never- 
theless, ills  like  pain,  want,  ignorance  could  not  of  them- 
selves grow  into  moral  evils ;  to  bring  about  this  the 
activity  of  the  personal  will  is  necessary.  It  is  the 
supervention  of  this  will  on  the  natural  impulses  and 
desires  which  transforms  the  merely  sensuous  into  the 
moral  action.  Man's  native  tendency  is  to  satisfy  these 


520  THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

impulses ;  such  as,  for  example,  the  impulse  to  self- 
preservation.  But  when  many  are  united  in  a  social 
system,  the  impulses  and  desires  of  individuals  must  be 
harmonised  and  made  consistent  with  the  good  of  the 
whole.  So  out  of  the  social  order  the  conception  of  a 
law  or  norm  for  the  will  defines  itself;  and  the  act  of 
the  will  in  transgressing  this  norm  takes  on  the  character 
of  moral  evil  The  will  which  refuses  to  identify  itself 
with  the  norm  is  anti-social  in  spirit,  it  is  self-will ;  and 
it  is  self-will  which  converts  the  self-conserving  instinct 
into  moral  selfishness.  Step  by  step  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  ethical  will  there  goes  the  development  of 
moral  obligation,  and  the  consequent  growth  of  the 
notion  of  moral  evil.  And  when  the  moral  law  is  placed 
under  the  guardianship  of  a  divine  Power  or  Powers,  then 
moral  evil  assumes  that  religious  significance  which  is 
commonly  expressed  by  the  word  sin.  For  sin  means  a 
transgression  of,  or  a  failure  to  conform  to,  the  law  of  God 
rather  than  the  law  of  man ;  and  that  is  made  possible 
by  the  existence  of  self-conscious  beings  who  possess  the 
capacity  of  rational  choice. 

When  we  ask  at  what  point  in  the  evolution  of  the 
human  species  natural  was  transformed  into  moral  evil,  we 
are  putting  a  question  to  which  no  definite  answer  can 
be  given.  Nor  is  the  question  one  of  any  practical 
importance.  It  is  the  fact  that  sin  exists  which  matters, 
not  when  it  began  to  exist.  But  we  ought  to  remember 
that  sin  can  only  develop  within  a  social  system  or  order, 
and  that,  from  the  first,  it  has  a  social  significance.  Now 
in  virtue  of  the  living  or  organic  character  of  society, 
moral  evil  cannot  be  restricted  to  a  particular  point  or 
points,  but  always  tends  to  diffuse  itself  through  the 
system,  much  in  the  way  that  a  disease  affects  the  con- 
dition of  the  whole  body.  The  individual  cannot  so 
'  trammel  up  the  consequence '  even  of  a  single  act  of 
wrong,  that  the  issue  will  concern  himself  alone ;  and 
the  sin  of  a  section  of  a  community  reacts  upon  the  rest. 
Moral  evil  develops  into  a  power  in  society  which  in- 


NATURAL    AND    MOBAL   EVIL  521 

fluences  modes  of  thought  and  habits  of  life,  and  leaves 
its  impress  on  institutions.  Hence  sin  comes  to  function 
as  a  collective  force,  maintaining  itself  from  generation 
to  generation,  and  offering  a  constant  resistance  to  the 
progress  of  the  good.  Proteus-like  it  takes  new  forms  in 
the  course  of  the  struggle  with  advancing  culture.  What 
were  virtues  in  the  savage  may  be  transformed  into  vices 
for  the  civilised  man ;  and  if  growing  civilisation  fosters 
new  types  of  moral  excellence,  these  are  balanced  by  fresh 
forms  of  moral  evil.  The  battle  is  a  continuous  and 
wearing  one,  because  the  forces  of  goodness  are  doomed  to 
wage  war  against  an  elusive  enemy  who,  if  beaten  in  one 
quarter,  only  withdraws  to  reappear  in  another,  ready  to 
renew  the  fight.  So  the  strife  prolongs  itself,  assuming 
new  forms  and  phases  as  the  generations  come  and  go, 
yet  never  crowned  by  a  final  victory. 

The  far-spread  effects  of  sin,  and  its  tragic  results  on 
human  life,  are  not  intelligible  apart  from  its  collective 
character.  It  becomes  a  subtle  and  pervasive  influence, 
diffusing  itself  through  the  social  structure,  so  that  it  is  a 
hopeless  task  merely  to  attack  it  at  single  points.  The 
redemption  of  individuals  will  not  suffice  while  the  sources 
of  infection  still  remain.  More  and  more  the  modern 
mind  is  realising  the  significance  of  the  environment  in 
propagating  sin,  and  its  power  in  fostering  and  sustaining 
sinful  habits.  And  the  exceeding  difficulty  with  which  all 
who  strive  for  the  moral  regeneration  of  society  have  to 
contend  is  this  fact,  that  young  and  growing  lives  are  in- 
fected with  evil  from  their  environment  before  they  are 
fully  conscious  of  its  meaning,  or  have  developed  the 
capacity  of  resistance.  Long  ere  they  have  reached  the 
maturity  of  their  powers  sinful  habits  have  developed  and 
become  fixed,  so  that  they  exercise  a  constraining  influence 
on  the  will,  and  the  task  of  overcoming  them  has  been 
rendered  tenfold  more  hard.  Nemo  repente  fit  turpis- 
simus :  many  degraded  beings  have  absorbed  sin  early, 
gradually,  and  almost  unconsciously  from  their  surround- 
ing so  that  it  is  impossible  to  say  how  far  they  are 


522  THE   PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

responsible  for  what  they  have  come  to  be.  How  vast  is 
the  difference  in  spiritual  opportunity  between  a  life  grow- 
ing up  in  an  environment  of  grace  and  another  growing  up 
in  an  environment  of  sin !  Here  again  we  have  a  problem 
in  the  distribution  of  moral  evil  similar  to  that  which 
existed  in  the  case  of  natural  evil. 

The  question  of  the  origin  of  moral  evil  or  sin,  like 
other  questions  of  origin,  is  susceptible  of  a  twofold  inter- 
pretation. It  may  be  taken  to  mean  how  sin  came  to 
enter  the  human  mind,  or  it  may  be  taken  to  signify  the 
ultimate  origin  or  cause  of  sin.  In  the  one  case  we  have 
a  problem  of  psychological  genesis,  in  the  other  a  problem 
of  metaphysical  explanation. 

(1)  The  psychological  genesis  of  sin  is  much  the  easier 
problem,  and  to  some  extent  an  answer  to  it  has  been  given 
in  the  foregoing  pages.  Moral  guilt  in  the  full  sense  can 
only  exist  where  a  self-conscious  subject  distinguishes  itself 
from  its  natural  impulses  and  desires,  and  reflects  upon 
them.  To  be  capable  of  sinning  a  being  must  be  capable 
of  rational  choice.  It  is  when  man  is  conscious  of  the 
good  in  the  form  of  a  law  or  general  principle  of  obligation, 
that  the  notion  of  moral  wrong  or  transgression  of  the  law 
develops  in  his  mind.  The  consciousness  of  sin  is  present 
in  a  man  when  he  recognises  a  norm  or  rule  to  which  he 
ought  to  conform,  and  is  aware  that  he  has  broken  the 
rule,  or  has  failed  to  do  what  he  ought  to  have  done.  In 
primitive  culture  the  custom  of  the  tribe  is  the  germ  from 
which  the  conception  of  a  moral  law  afterwards  evolved  ; 
and  the  breach  of  the  custom,  with  the  consequent  dread 
of  magical  ills,  is  the  far-off  precursor  of  the  civilised  man's 
moral  offence  and  the  rebuke  of  conscience  which  he 
experiences.  But  neither  in  the  case  of  the  individual  nor 
of  the  race  can  we  fix  precisely  a  point  in  the  temporal 
development  at  which  the  purely  natural  consciousness 
passes  into  the  moral  consciousness.  Indeed,  with  the 
individual  it  is  unfortunately  true,  as  already  noted, 
that  the  germs  of  moral  evil,  in  the  form  of  wrong 
tendencies  and  desires,  are  present  in  him  before  he  is 


NATURAL  AND  MORAL  EVIL          523 

clearly  conscious  of  their  significance.     The  doctrine  of  the 
depravity  of  human  nature  has  this  grain  of  truth  in  it. 

(2)  The  metaphysical  problem  is  the  crucial  problem 
of  moral  evil.  The  question  here  is  not  about  the  way  in 
which  the  consciousness  of  sin  developed  :  it  is  the  question 
why  should  sin  exist  in  the  world  at  all.  Is  this  hostile 
element  necessary  or  accidental  ?  Is  it  involved  in  the 
structure  of  the  world,  or  was  it  somehow  introduced  into 
it  ?  Those  who  put  these  questions  bring  with  them  a 
fundamental  postulate  or  assumption.  The  postulate  is 
that  the  Good  should  rule  in  the  universe,  and  mundane 
experience  ought  to  be  a  harmonious  whole  which  excludes 
the  presence  of  such  antagonistic  forces.  If  that  be  so,  the 
problem  is  to  understand  why  the  universe  fails  to  conform 
to  what  is  best.  If  that  failure  is  not  due  to  intrinsic 
defect,  is  it  owing  to  causes  which  an  all-wise  God  could 
have  prevented,  had  he  so  willed  ?  These  are  questions 
which  each  generation  puts  to  itself,  and  strives  to  answer 
as  best  it  can.  The  optimistically  minded  conclude  that 
the  world  is  a  good  world,  and  sin  is  entirely  subordinated 
to  the  good.  The  sceptic  and  the  pessimist  are  very  sure 
this  is  not  the  *  best  of  all  possible  worlds/  and  ought  to 
be  much  better  in  the  interests  of  human  happiness — 

"  Ah  Love  !  could  you  and  I  with  Him  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  Scheme  of  Things  entire, 
Would  not  we  shatter  it  to  bits— and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  Heart's  Desire !  " 

Others,  and  these  perhaps  more  humble-minded,  cling 
to  the  faith  that  the  world,  despite  its  burden  of  suffering, 
manifests  an  increasing  good.  The  whole  stress  of  the 
Problem  of  Evil  is  felt  most  keenly  by  the  theist,  who  has 
to  reconcile  the  .existence  of  evil  with  his  postulate  that 
the  universe  is  the  creation  of  a  God  who  is  good.  Hence 
the  attempts,  made  in  a  religious  interest,  to  show  that 
evil  can  in  some  way  be  explained  and  proved  to  be 
consistent  with  the  ultimate  well-being  of  the  universe 
which  is  the  object  of  the  Divine  Will.  This  is  the  task 
to  which  the  name  Theodicy  has  been  given. 


524  THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

C. — THEISM  AND  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  EVIL. 

For  the  atheist  or  the  agnostic  evil  may  present  a 
problem,  but  it  is  not  so  urgent  and  perplexing  a  problem 
as  it  is  for  the  theist.  For  they  are  spared  the  difficulty  of 
reconciling  facts  that  are  bad  with  a  source  which  is  pre- 
sumed to  be  good.  Indeed,  we  frequently  find  it  put 
forward  as  a  reason  against  belief  in  a  God  who  is  good, 
that  the  misery  and  sin  of  the  world  are  inconsistent  with 
the  idea.  To  some  minds,  for  instance,  it  is  a  conclusive 
objection  to  the  Christian  conception  of  a  Father  in  Heaven, 
that,  if  such  a  Being  existed,  he  would  assuredly  have 
made  a  better  world  than  this.  Hence  to  those  who  hold 
firmly  to  the  theistic  postulate  the  fact  of  evil  is  a  kind  of 
challenge,  a  challenge  they  dare  not  ignore  and  must  try 
to  meet  as  best  they  can. 

Of  the  solutions  to  this  momentous  problem  which  have 
been  offered,  the  dualistic  solution — the  theory  that  there 
is  in  the  universe  a  Power  or  Principle,  personal  or  not,  in 
eternal  opposition  to  God — is  generally  discarded  by  the 
modern  mind.  It  is  really  a  survival  of  an  older  and  ruder 
phase  of  thought,  and  adds  to  the  difficulties  of  the 
subject  instead  of  lightening  them.  Such  a  dualism  is  not 
compatible  with  a  genuinely  spiritual  and  theistic  conception 
of  the  universe. 

What  is  called  the  metaphysical  explanation  of  evil 
is  far  more  relevant  and  important.  The  best  known 
exposition  of  this  theory  is  that  of  Leibniz.  In  his 
Monadology  he  remarks  that  "  created  beings  derive  their 
perfections  from  the  influence  of  God,  but  their  imperfec- 
tions come  from  their  own  nature,  which  is  incapable 
of  being  without  limits." l  And  in  his  Thtodicte  he  tries 
to  work  out  the  notion,  that  the  imperfection  which  is 
inherent  in  finite  things  is  the  source  of  the  evil  in 
the  world,  and  not  the  will  of  God.  This  is  'the  best 
possible  world,'  says  Leibniz ;  but  even  in  such  a  world 
the  limitations,  and  consequent  imperfections,  of  its  elements 

1  Latta's  translation,  p.  240. 


THEISM    AND    EVIL  525 

involve  the  existence  of  evils.  These  evils,  however,  in 
comparison  with  the  good,  are  relatively  small, — here 
Leibniz's  optimism  shows  itself — and  they  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  discords  which  enter  into  and  enhance  the 
beauty  of  a  complete  musical  movement.  So  far  as 
natural  defects  and  physical  evils  like  pain  are  concerned, 
Leibniz  finds  they  can  be  reconciled  with  the  purpose 
of  a  benevolent  God,  because  they  are  necessarily  implied 
in  a  world  of  finite  existences.  In  regard  to  moral  evil, 
he  tends  in  the  end  to  trace  it  back  to  defect  or  limitation, 
in  other  words,  to  identify  it  with  metaphysical  evil.  The 
line  of  thought  developed  by  Leibniz  has  been  followed 
by  those  who  seek  to  explain  evil  as  a  necessary  constituent 
in  the  complex  whole  of  experience.  The  keynote  of 
all  these  theories  is  the  necessary  imperfection  of  the 
finite. 

The  theory  we  have  been  describing  is  more  successful 
in  shedding  light  on  natural  than  on  moral  evils.  In 
the  case  of  natural  evils  we  can,  I  think,  find  some  ex- 
planation and  justification  of  their  existence  within  the 
present  order  of  experience.  Such  things  as  ignorance 
and  failure  to  attain  ends  are  implied  in  the  nature  of 
finite  beings,  who  are  limited  by  one  another  and  the 
larger  system  of  which  they  are  elements.  The  world 
of  life,  and  more  especially  the  world  of  spiritual  life, 
is  a  developmental  process,  and  the  natural  order  or 
system  must  be  such  as  to  form  a  basis  for  that  process. 
The  so-called  '  laws,'  or  rather  the  '  uniformities,'  which 
obtain  in  nature  are  necessary  to  the  existence  of  human 
life ;  and  this  is  at  once  apparent  when  we  reflect  how 
impossible  it  would  be  for  man  to  maintain  himself  in 
the  world,  were  there  not  a  constancy,  and  therefore 
reliability,  in  the  processes  of  nature.  The  operation  of 
the  principle  of  gravitation  is  necessary  to  the  planetary 
system  and  the  mundane  order,  yet  in  its  working  it 
sometimes  means  destruction  to  man  and  his  labours. 
Still,  who  can  doubt  that  it  works  for  good  rather  than 
ill  ?  Whatever  loss  to  man  the  operation  of  these  uni- 


526  THE   PROBLEM   OF    EVIL 

formities  may  occasionally  entail,  their  continuous  action 
makes  possible  the  co-operation  of  human  minds,  and 
is  the  condition  of  human  progress.  Again,  in  limited 
and  conditioned  lives,  pain  is  not  a  pure  evil,  for  it  plays 
a  useful  and  even  a  necessary  part  in  organic  development. 
The  experience  of  pain  warns  the  animal  that  its  life 
is  threatened,  and  stimulates  it  to  defend  itself :  it  is 
the  indispensable  correlate  of  pleasure,  which  is  the 
token  of  healthy  vitality.  The  pangs  of  hunger  impel 
man  and  the  lower  creatures  to  exert  themselves  for 
their  own  good ;  and  without  the  spur  of  want  man 
would  never  have  moved  forward  in  the  path  of  self- 
development.  A  painless  body  and  a  perfectly  tractable 
environment  would  have  meant  no  progress.  We  there- 
fore conclude  that  pain,  though  its  evils  are  patent, 
is  necessarily  involved  in  the  organisation  of  life,  and 
its  action  on  the  whole  is  beneficial.  Even  the  struggle 
for  existence,  with  all  the  harshness  and  suffering  it 
entails,  materially  contributes  to  the  health  and  efficiency 
of  living  beings.  These  and  other  natural  ills  are  not  in- 
consistent with  the  idea,  that  a  good  purpose  is  being 
realised  under  the  necessary  limitations  of  an  orderly 
world  of  co-existing  individuals. 

Of  death,  the  greatest  of  natural  evils,  the  same 
may  be  said.  It  is  implied  in  the  structure  of  multi- 
cellular  organisms  and  in  the  reproductive  function,  and 
life  would  not  be  practicable  without  it.  To  the  individual 
in  the  morning  freshness  of  his  powers,  death  is  commonly 
felt  as  a  great  hardship ;  but  when  the  race  is  run  and 
the  labour  ended,  it  comes  as  a  quiet  and  fitting  close 
of  the  human  day — 

"  Die  Vogelein  schweigen  im  Walde. 
Warte  nur,  balde 
Ruhest  du  auch." 

To  be  condemned   to    immortality    under    mundane    con- 
ditions would  be  a  fate  more  terrible  than  death.1     From 

1  Tennyson  has  expressed  this  thought  in  his  poem  "Tithonus." 


THEISM    AND   EVIL  527 

the  evolutionary  standpoint  we  can  say  that  death  is 
an  indispensable  means  to  the  historic  life.  The  advance 
of  age  gradually  diminishes  the  developmental  capacity 
of  the  individual,  and  he  becomes  inhospitable  to  new 
ideas.  Fixity  is  avoided  and  development  ensured  by 
each  generation  handing  over  its  heritage  and  labours 
to  a  younger  race,  who  bring  fresh  minds  and  unjaded 
powers  to  the  task  of  progress.  Development  demands 
the  succession  of  the  generations  and  the  law  of  mortality. 

There  is  no  objection  to  our  saying  that  natural 
evils  are  willed  by  God ;  yet  they  are  not  willed  as  ends, 
but  as  means  to  a  greater  good.  Apart  from  them  much 
good  that  is  in  the  world  would  not  be  realised.  At 
the  same  time  it  is  too  much  to  say  that  no  mystery 
gathers  round  these  evils,  and  that  their  operation  is 
always  intelligible.  The  problem  of  evil  becomes  baffling, 
when  we  turn  from  general  and  impersonal  reflexions 
to  consider  particular  cases.  We  have  previously  noted 
the  perplexity  occasioned  by  the  distribution  of  natural 
evils.  It  is  better  to  confess  openly  that  there  are 
instances  of  these  evils  where,  so  far  as  we  can  see. 
we  cannot  say  they  are  instrumental  in  bringing  about 
a  greater  good.  But  though  all  is  not  clear,  we  discern 
enough  to  feel  reasonably  sure  that  the  natural  evils  of 
experience  have  a  purpose  to  serve,  and  are  not  incon- 
sistent with  the  development  of  the  good  on  the  whole 
and  in  the  long  run. 

When  we  pass  to  consider  the  relation  of  moral  evil 
to  the  divine  government  of  the  world,  the  problem 
becomes  graver.  The  theist  who  asserts  the  ethical  and 
spiritual  character  of  God,  shrinks  from  making  God 
directly  responsible  for  sin.  To  say  that  God  wills  the 
good  and  also  wills  what  is  bad  seems  to  import  an 
unbearable  contradiction  into  the  Divine  nature.  What 
is  justly  accounted  a  defect  in  the  creature  cannot  surely 
be  right  in  the  Creator !  And  yet  on  theistic  premisses 
is  it  possible  to  absolve  God  from  all  responsibility  for 
evil  ?  He  at  least  brought  into  existence  the  conditions 


528  THE    PROBLEM   OF    EVIL 

which  made  moral  as  well  as  natural  evil  possible,  and 
he  could  not  have  done  so  in  ignorance  of  the  issue. 
We  shall  be  told,  that  to  say  that  a  Being  who  merely 
permits  an  evil,  or  does  not  prevent  an  evil  which  he 
could  have  prevented,  is  in  no  way  responsible  for  it, 
savours  more  of  sophistry  than  common  candour.  In 
the  case  of  natural  evils  we  found  it  practicable  to  say, 
they  were  conditionally  willed  by  God  as  a  means  to 
a  wider  good.  Now,  inasmuch  as  natural  and  moral 
evils  are  connected,  it  might  appear  to  follow  that  sin 
is  also  conditionally  willed  by  God.1  Still  in  the  instance 
of  natural  evils  it  was  feasible  to  affirm  that  they  were 
a  means  to  good.  Is  it  possible  to  say  the  same  of 
moral  evils  ?  Can  we  maintain  that  God  wills  sin  as 
instrumental  to  goodness  ?  There  would  be  no  insuperable 
objection  in  maintaining  this,  if  it  could  be  shown  that 
moral  evil  really  subserved  the  cause  of  goodness,  and 
that  it  was  a  useful  factor  in  the  rational  organisation 
of  the  world.  At  this  stage  we  shall  consider  one  or 
two  attempts,  since  the  time  of  Leibniz,  to  rationalise 
moral  evil. 

For  Hegel  the  real  is  the  rational ;  and  he  strives  to 
prove  that  sin  has  its  rightful  place  in  a  universe  which 
is  essentially  good,  because  essentially  rational.2  Like 
Leibniz,  Hegel  thinks  sin  attaches  to  the  nature  of  the 
finite  being,  but  he  brings  it  into  a  close  and  suggestive 
connexion  with  the  principle  of  development.  The  key 
to  the  Hegelian  theory  is  the  antagonism  in  the  subject 
due  to  its  finite-infinite  nature ;  and  the  solution  of  the 
contradiction  is  found  in  the  idea  of  development.  From 
naive  innocence,  through  sin,  man  rises  to  those  formed 
habits  of  virtue  in  which  his  spiritual  freedom  consists. 


1  Dr.  Rashdall,  in  his  Theory  of  Good  and  JEvil,919Q7,  vol.  ii.  p.  345, 
takes  up  this  position,  though  he  grants  it  would  be  more  satisfactory 
to  be  able  to  say  God  was  in  no  sense  the  cause  of  evil. 

2  Hegel's  view  is   stated   in    his   Phil,  der  Religion,  1840,  vol.  ii.  pp. 
258-280.     Dr.  McTaggart  expounds  Hegel's  theory  in  an  essay  on  "Sin" 
in  his  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology. 


THEISM    AND   EVIL  529 

Hegel  sees  clearly  enough  that  sin  is  a  matter  of  the 
will,  and  he  refuses  to  call  a  man  good  who  merely 
exhibits  that  harmony  of  nature  which  appears  in  beings 
without  will.  Nor  does  he  deny  the  difference  between 
sin  and  virtue.  But  he  certainly  holds  sin  has  a  justifiable 
place  and  function.  It  forms  a  necessary  stage  to  self- 
determined  virtue:  it  is  therefore  'good  in  the  making/ 
and  contributes  to  the  harmony  and  perfection  of  the 
whole.  Quite  in  the  same  spirit  English  writers  like 
Messrs.  Bradley  and  Bosanquet  treat  the  problem  of 
moral  evil.  Thus  Mr.  Bradley  assures  us  that,  though 
sin  is  a  discord,  yet  "  the  discord  as  such  disappears,  if 
the  harmony  is  made  wide  enough."1  And  Professor 
Bosanquet  speaks  just  as  definitely  in  the  same  sense. 
"  Evil,  one  might  say.  is  good  in  the  wrong  place." 
"  There  is  nothing  in  evil  which  cannot  be  absorbed  in 
good  and  contributory  to  it ;  and  it  springs  from  the  same 
source  as  good  and  value."  2 

There  are  elements  of  truth  in  what,  speaking  broadly, 
we  may  term  the  Hegelian  view  of  sin.  To  bring  the 
notion  of  moral  evil  into  close  relation  with  the  idea  of 
development  is  a  step  in  the  right  direction.  It  is  like- 
wise true  that  sin  is  something  to  be  fought  and  overcome 
by  the  progressive  endeavour  of  human  wills.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  positive  and  really  detrimental  character 
of  moral  evil  is  not  rightly  recognised.  For  sin  is  treated 
as  a  negative  and  transitional  moment  in  the  evolution 
of  self-conscious  spirits,  and  therefore  enters  definitely 
and  necessarily  into  the  development  of  the  spiritual  life. 
The  way  to  virtue  lies  through  sin.  That  sin  appears  to 
be  a  jarring  discord  is  only  the  case  when  it  is  regarded 
from  a  lower  and  partial  point  of  view.  In  short,  sin,  on 
this  theory,  has  its  own  legitimate  place  in  human  life, 
and  you  cannot  truly  say  it  stands  for  something  which 
ought  not  to  be.  On  this  point  we  join  issue.  That 
moral  evil  is  a  step  to  the  development  of  a  higher  good 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  1st  ed.,  p.  202. 

2  The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  209,  217. 
34 


530  THE    PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

may  sound  plausible  so  long  as  you  remain  in  the  region 
of  the  universal  and  impersonal.  It  ceases  to  be  so  when 
you  examine  the  concrete  facts.  Whose  good  does  the 
existence  of  sin  subserve  ?  A  wrong-doer  does  not  benefit 
his  neighbours  by  his  wrong- doing !  Does  sin  prove  a 
good  to  the  sinner  himself  ?  It  will  hardly  be  maintained 
that  the  youth  who  forsakes  the  ways  of  innocence  and 
plunges  into  profligacy  and  crime,  and  who  afterwards 
overcomes  his  evil  habits,  is  necessarily  a  better  man  for 
his  experience.  He  may  really  be  weaker,  and  practical 
knowledge  of  this  kind  is  a  doubtful  benefit  at  the  best. 
Nor  is  it  needful  to  plunge  deep  into  sin  ourselves  in 
order  to  experience  that  reaction  against  it  which  is  a 
stimulus  to  earnest  well-doing.  And  no  one  can  honestly 
say  that  the  crime  and  vice,  which  find  a  place  in  every 
great  city,  prove  a  blessing  to  any  individual  or  class  in 
the  community.  The  opposite  is  true.  In  fact,  to  say 
that  sin  is  '  good  in  the  making '  is  to  transform  the 
character  of  sin,  to  change  it  into  something  better  than 
it  is.  A  dispassionate  survey  of  the  effects  of  sin  on 
society  and  on  the  individual  leads  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  is  a  positive  evil  rather  than  an  instrument  of  good ; 
not  a  discord  which  brings  out  the  harmony,  but  some- 
thing which  mars  it. 

I  have  said  it  was  a  merit  to  bring  the  conception 
of  sin  into  connexion  with  the  idea  of  development.  But 
the  theory  of  development  expounded  by  absolute  idealists 
makes  it  impossible  to  do  justice  to  the  nature  of  moral 
evil.  On  this  view  development,  alike  in  its  physical  and 
spiritual  forms,  is  a  process  of  explication,  determined  in 
all  its  stages  and  excluding  anything  in  the  nature  of 
new  beginnings.  Man's  nature  contains  the  promise  and 
potency  of  the  end  in  the  beginning ;  and  though  the 
realisation  of  the  end  posits  the  activity  of  the  self- 
determining  will,  it  is  not  an  activity  which  leaves  room 
for  any  open  choice  of  alternatives  or  for  any  real  con- 
tingency. No  doubt,  if  you  insist  that  the  universe  is 
through  and  through  a  rational  whole,  then  you  must 


HUMAN   FREEDOM    AND   EVIL  531 

make  out  somehow  that  sin  is  a  rational  moment  in  the 
human  experience  which  falls  within  the  universe.  But 
the  gospel  of  perfect  rationality  fares  badly  in  the  face 
of  concrete  facts ;  and  as  we  have  often  insisted,  the  very 
idea  of  rationality  is  relative  to  the  unrationalised.  The 
theist,  in  the  face  of  the  facts  of  moral  experience,  cannot 
follow  this  line  of  thought,  when  he  seeks  to  harmonise 
the  existence  of  sin  with  God's  moral  government  of  the 
universe.  It  remains  to  ask,  therefore,  whether,  in  con- 
necting sin  with  personal  wills,  we  are  not  implying  a 
principle  of  freedom  which,  to  some  extent  at  least, 
removes  the  responsibility  for  moral  evil  from  God  and 
lays  it  on  man. 

D. — HUMAN  FREEDOM  AND  EVIL. 

A  theistic  theory  of  the  universe  which  affirms  the 
divine  creative  activity,  in  so  doing  asserts  a  responsibility 
on  the  part  of  God  for  the  world  he  has  created.  A 
Deity  who  creates  beings  that  may  sin,  and  who  in  fact 
do  sin,  must  be  held  to  be,  so  far,  responsible  for  the 
consequences  of  his  creative  action.  At  the  least  he  has 
made  possible  the  evil  he  could  have  prevented.  But  if 
we  accept  a  deterministic  conception  of  human  conduct, 
we  must  go  further  than  this — we  must  say  that  God, 
though  himself  ethically  perfect,  directly  willed  the 
existence  of  moral  evil,  even  although  he  willed  it  as  a 
means  to  good.  For  in  this  case  man's  actions  would 
proceed  necessarily  from  his  original  nature ;  and  the 
development  of  sin  in  the  world  would  flow  inevitably 
from  the  character  of  man  as  it  reacted  to  the  stimulus 
of  experience.  Granted  that  this  is  so,  it  seems  hard  to 
come  to  any  other  conclusion  than  that  the  existence  of 
sin  is  due  to  the  direct  action  of  God.  In  willing  the 
being  of  man  he  also  willed  the  existence  of  sin.  And 
the  conclusion,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  would  be  hostile 
to  the  interests  of  ethical  religion. 

It  seems  needful,  therefore,  to  discuss  again  the  time- 


532  THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

worn  problem  of  human  freedom,  in  order  to  make  clear 
how  far  man  has  a  responsibility  for  the  presence  of  moral 
evil  in  the  world.  Eesponsibility  for  natural  evils  on 
man's  part  is,  of  course,  not  in  question. 

Before  proceeding  further  it  is  essential  that  we  should 
agree  about  the  sense  in  which  we  use  the  word  freedom, 
for  some  discussions  of  the  subject  suffer  from  ambiguity 
on  this  point.  Certain  thinkers  regularly  use  the  term 
freedom  to  signify  the  harmonious  realisation  of  the  good 
in  human  character.  To  be  free  in  this  way  means  that 
man  attains  to  his  self -fulfilment,  realises  his  true  idea. 
In  this  sense  history  has  been  called  the  development  of 
freedom,  the  gradual  and  progressive  fruition  of  human 
capacities  and  powers.  Freedom,  so  conceived,  denotes  an 
ideal  rather  than  an  accomplished  fact.  For  man  in  this 
life  never  reaches  a  perfect  and  complete  self-realisation. 
It  is  also  clear  that  freedom,  in  this  large  meaning,  does 
not  bear  intimately  on  the  problem  of  responsibility  for  sin. 
The  other  use  of  freedom  refers  directly  to  freedom  of 
choice  and  the  meaning  which  attaches  to  it.  About  the 
fact  of  choice  there  is  no  dispute,  but  there  has  been  much 
controversy  whether  the  alternatives  presented  to  the  will 
in  a  given  case  are  really  open  or  not.  In  other  words, 
might  the  individual  who-  has  elected  to  do  evil  have  chosen 
to  do  good  instead  ?  It  will  make  a  decided  difference  to 
our  view  of  human  responsibility  for  sin,  according  as  we 
answer  this  question  in  one  way  or  the  other;  and  this 
must  be  our  plea  for  entering  on  a  threadbare  dispute. 

The  extreme  denial  of  human  freedom  takes  the  form 
of  mechanical  determinism,  or,  as  the  late  Prof.  James 
termed  it,  '  hard  determinism.'  On  this  theory  it  is  an 
illusion  that  man  is  free  to  choose  one  object  rather  than 
another,  or  that  he  can  make  his  actions  in  any  way 
different  from  what  they  are.  The  rigid  necessitarian  tells 
us  that  a  man's  deeds  follow  strictly  from  motives,  and 
his  motives  are  determined  by  his  nature  and  his  environ- 
ment. Motives,  thus  springing  from  the  situation,  act  and 
react  on  one  another  in  a  quasi  mechanical  fashion,  and 


HUMAN   FREEDOM    AND    EVIL  533 

in  the  result  the  strongest  motive  always  prevails  and 
brings  about  the  corresponding  act.  There  is  no  con- 
tingency anywhere :  the  deed  results  inevitably  from  the 
conditions,  and  human  conduct  conforms  as  rigidly  to  law 
as  a  physiological  process  or  the  movements  of  a  body 
under  gravitation.  That  the  individual  will  can  alter  the 
course  of  events  is  an  illusion.  If  mechanical  determinism 
is  true,  the  individual  is  no  more  responsible  for  his  good 
or  evil  deeds  than  he  is  for  his  stature  or  the  colour  of  his 
hair.  But  the  fallacies  of  this  theory  are  transparent,  and 
there  are  not  many  thinkers  who  would  now  rigorously 
defend  it.  Determinism  of  this  sort  ignores  the  all- 
important  activity  of  the  self  in  choosing  and  in  willing, 
and  makes  the  process  of  deliberation  superfluous  and 
unmeaning.  For  why  should  we  deliberate,  if  the 
strongest  motive  will  always  assert  itself  by  its  own 
inherent  force  ?  Again,  it  is  a  serious  error  to  say  that 
motives  and  acts  are  related  by  mechanical  causality :  the 
use  of  this  category  in  the  spiritual  sphere  is  psychologi- 
cally false.  Only  by  a  thoroughly  bad  abstraction  can 
motives  be  treated  apart  from  the  self;  for  they  spring 
from  the  character  of  the  self  and  represent  its  activity. 
Without  knowledge  of  the  man  himself  you  can  never 
understand  his  motives  in  any  concrete  situation.  And  to 
speak  of  motives  interacting  is  absurd,  unless  you  fully 
recognise  that  such  so-called  interaction  falls  within  the 
activity  of  the  central  and  sustaining  self.  In  short, 
'hard  determinism'  makes  the  personal  consciousness  of 
freedom  utterly  inexplicable,  and  it  is  condemned  by  its 
failure  to  comprehend  the  indispensable  part  played  by  the 
self  in  all  volition. 

A  second,  and  a  much  more  adequate  theory,  is  that 
which  identifies  freedom  with  self-determinism.  Prof. 
James  has  called  it  'soft  determinism*  to  distinguish  it 
from  hard  or  mechanical  determinism.  The  supporters  of 
this  theory  admit  fully  the  dominant  part  played  by  the 
self  in  all  acts  of  rational  will,  and  they  duly  recognise 
that  motives  apart  from  the  self  can  have  no  dynamic 


534  THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

efficiency.  Man  deliberates  and  chooses,  and  by  delibera- 
tion and  choice  he  makes  clear  to  himself  and  decides 
what  he  really  wants,  thus  consciously  realising  his 
purpose :  otherwise  he  would  not  be  responsible  for  his 
action.  But  in  every  act  of  choice  man  reveals  his 
character  as  a  whole  in  its  relation  to  the  specific  situation. 
In  willing,  the  individual  expresses  the  character  he  has 
formed  as  it  bears  on  the  particular  circumstances  with 
which  he  is  called  to  deal.  Freedom  just  means  that  man 
is  not  determined  db  extra:  the  individual  determines 
himself;  and  by  the  individual  is  not  meant  a  bare  self, 
but  the  self  with  a  definite  content.  Action  therefore 
flows  from  character,  and  open  possibilities  do  not  exist. 
Nevertheless,  to  have  to  act  as  our  character  determines 
is  no  sacrifice  of  freedom :  it  is  self-determination,  the 
character  being  the  concrete  self.  It  is  futile  for  man  to 
expect  a  freedom  which  is  independent  of  his  own  nature. 
The  apostles  of  self -determinism  clinch  their  arguments 
in  self-defence  by  a  shrewd  criticism  of  the  libertarian 
theory.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  pure  liberty  of 
indifference,  the  full  power  to  do  or  leave  undone,  to 
choose  a  instead  of  b  or  b  instead  of  a.  Experience  does 
not  endorse  any  such  claim ;  and  if  the  claim  were  good  it 
would  mean  that  the  connexion  of  character  with  conduct 
was  cut,  for  any  motive  might  be  made  to  prevail  by  the 
mysterious  power  of  free-will.  The  disruption  of  the 
connected  whole  of  character,  conduct,  and  motives  would 
be  fatal  to  human  reliability  and  responsibility.  "  If  the 
indetenninist  is  right,  we  have  no  reason  to  expect  any 
line  of  conduct  from  any  one,  rather  than  any  other  line 
of  conduct  which  is  physically  possible." l 

From  the  standpoint  of  rationality  the  upholder  of 
self-determinism  can  make  out  a  fairly  strong  case  for  his 
theory.  Yet  some  important  considerations  can  be 
brought  forward  on  the  other  side. 

(1)  We  have  to  point  out  that  merely  to  act  in 
accordance  with  character  is  no  pledge  of  freedom,  and 

1  McTaggart,  Some  Dogmas  of  Religion,  p.  183. 


HUMAN   FREEDOM   AND   EVIL  535 

does  not  serve  to  distinguish  the  man  who  is  master  of 
himself  from  the  man  who  is  mastered  by  his  passions. 
The  veriest  slave  of  evil  habits  acts  in  harmony  with  the 
character  he  has  formed.  Freedom,  on  the  self-determinist 
view,  does  not  admit  of  open  possibilities :  at  each  point 
in  his  life  a  man  acts  in  the  only  way  he  could  act,  and 
when  you  trace  his  development  you  mark  how  his  conduct 
issues  constantly  from  his  character  in  its  connexion  with 
his  circumstances.  Now  when  you  follow  backward  the 
development  of  the  individual  in  time,  you  find  that  moral 
acting  gradually  passes  into  a  stage  when  conduct  was 
natural  and  non-moral.  But  if  the  growing  self  can  never 
elude  its  causal  connexion  with  the  past,  if  there  never 
comes  a  point  when  it  can  initiate  a  new  movement  by 
an  act  of  freedom,  it  becomes  a  puzzle  to  understand  how 
the  moral  emerges  from  the  non-moral  and  wins  its  dis- 
tinctive quality.  On  the  theory  we  are  criticising,  moral 
character  runs  back  in  a  determinate  line  of  development 
to  elements  which  are  not  moral.  The  inference  is  that 
moral  character  is  the  issue  of  natural  conditions.1 

(2)  Again,  if  you  accept  the  self-determinist  theory 
which  denies  the  existence  of  open  possibilities  in 
experience,  how  are  you  to  explain  fully  facts  like  regret 
and  repentance  ?  It  is  no  doubt  true  to  reply,  that  the 
state  of  mind  signifies  sorrow  on  the  part  of  the  individual 
because  his  character  was  such  that  he  acted  in  the  way 
he  did ;  and  if  the  deed  proceeded  from  a  purely  arbitrary 
act  of  will,  it  would  have  no  moral  significance.  If,  too, 
the  act  expressed  no  element  or  elements  in  the  character 
of  the  doer,  there  would  not  be  any  ground  for  personal 
regret.  All  this  is  true,  yet  not  a  sufficient  explanation. 
On  the  other  side  it  must  be  pointed  out,  if  our  act  issued 
necessarily  from  our  character  in  the  given  situation,  if  we 
could  not  have  willed  otherwise  than  we  did,  our  repent- 

1  To  avoid  this  conclusion  and  still  uphold  a  spiritual  determinism,  some 
have  argued  for  a  self  which  is  ultimate,  uncreated,  and  eternal,  and  so  lies 
behind  the  whole  temporal  development  of  character.  So  Prof.  Howison 
in  his  Limits  oj  Evolution. 


536  THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

ance  for  it  would  not  be  explicable.  The  sting  of  repent- 
ance does  not  simply  mean  that  our  feelings  now  are  at 
discord  with  our  feelings  when  we  sinned :  it  also  implies 
that  we  might  have  acted  differently,  that  we  ought  to 
have  done  so  and  did  not.  With  keen  regret  there  always 
goes  the  belief  that  something  better  was  possible.  This 
is  confirmed  by  the  fact,  that  the  more  fully  a  man  is 
persuaded  that,  in  the  circumstances,  he  could  not  have 
done  otherwise,  the  less  is  his  regret  for  the  wrong  done.1 

(3)  In  coming  to  an  opinion  on  this  problem  we  are,  I 
think,  entitled  to  lay  stress  on  the  immediate  consciousness 
of  freedom  we  enjoy  at  the  time  of  acting.  In  the  vast 
number  of  acts  which  have  become  habitual  a  man  simply 
acts  without  reflecting  whether  he  is  free  or  not.  But 
when  there  is  conflict  of  motives  and  deliberation,  the 
great  majority  of  people  believe  that,  in  choosing,  the  possi- 
bility is  open  between  different  lines  of  action,  and  also 
that  they  could  will  or  refrain  from  willing.2  The  active  self 
is  directly  experienced  as  a  free  cause  ;  and  to  say  that  char- 
acter determines  conduct  is  meaningless,  unless  you  mean 
by  that  the  self  which  wills.  Character,  apart  from  the 
self  which  owns  it,  is  an  abstraction.  One  must  point  out 
that,  when  you  reconstruct  the  process  of  willing  in  thought 
and  envisage  it  in  conceptual  space  and  time,  you  alter  the 
immediate  experience.  Instead  of  the  '  flow  of  concrete 
duration '  you  represent  a  succession  in  time  where  effects 
follow  causes,  and  these  in  turn  follow  other  causes,  after  the 
fashion  of  the  transeunt  causality  we  attribute  to  nature.8 

1  •«  I  admit  that  so  far  as  the  sentiment  of  remorse  implies  self-blame 
irreraovably  fixed  on  the  self-blamed,  it  must  tend  to  vanish  from  the  mind 
of  a  convinced  determinist."     Sidgwick's  Methods  of  Ethics,  6th  ed.,  p.  71. 

2  Here  again  let  me  quote  Prof.   Sidgwick  :    "Against  the   formidable 
array  of  cumulative  evidence  offered  for  Determinism  there  is  to  be  set  the 
immediate  affirmation  of  consciousness  in  the  moment  of  deliberate  action.'' 
Op.  cit.  p.  65. 

3  In  dealing  with  the  problem  of  freedom,  Bergson  lays  stress  on  the 
difference  between  the  actual  experience  of  willing  and  the  experience  repre- 
sented in  the  artificially  developed  time- form.     In  Time  and  Free   Will  he 
employs  this  argument  against  Determinism.     Cp.  also  the  valuable  remarks 
of  Prof.  Ward  in  his  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  305  ff. 


HUMAN   FREEDOM    AND   EVIL  537 

The  man  himself  in  willing  explains  his  action  by  pointing 
forward  to  the  ends  he  is  striving  to  realise  ;  the  retrospective 
observer  reverses  the  process,  and  inquires  what  motives 
prompted  the  act,  how  the  motives  were  influenced  by 
character,  and  how  character  was  influenced  by  something 
else.  This  method  gives  the  infinite  regress  ;  and  that  is 
sufficient  to  show  that  the  causal  series  is  only  a  serviceable 
postulate  by  which  we  interpret  experience,  but  not  the  full 
truth.  In  the  end  we  must  presuppose  a  free  or  uncaused 
cause  which  is  the  ground  of  its  own  action.  The  human 
will  is  such  a  free  cause,  and  its  movement  is  not  to  be 
reconstructed  and  explained  by  the  aid  of  factors  beyond 
itself. 

(4)  Self-determinism  which  refuses  to  recognise  open 
possibilities,  and  admits  no  contingency  in  human  experi- 
ence, rests  on  a  defective  idea  of  what  spiritual  development 
really  means.  For  development  on  this  view  means 
explication,  and  the  constant  endeavour  is  to  exhibit  a 
definite  and  determinate  connexion  between  the  stages  of 
the  process.  If  the  exigencies  of  causal  explanation  are 
pleaded  in  defence  of  this,  we  reply  that  spiritual  self- 
development  transcends  the  law  of  causal  succession  in  time. 
Say  what  you  will,  there  is  something  repellent  in  the  rigid 
and  inflexible  development  of  experience  and  character, 
and  there  is  much  to  welcome  in  the  energetic  protest  of 
the  Pragmatist  against  a  '  block  universe/  The  epigenetic 
conception  of  development — that  conception  which  re- 
cognises new  beginnings  within  the  developmental  process 
— is  far  more  in  harmony  with  the  facts  of  natural  and 
spiritual  evolution.  Let  it  be  frankly  granted  that  these 
new  beginnings,  in  the  way  that  they  come  about,  are 
not  perfectly  intelligible  to  us :  certainly  they  cannot  be 
explained  in  terms  of  what  has  gone  before.  And  this, 
no  doubt,  exposes  us  to  the  charge  of  positing  a  non- 
rational  element  in  experience.  But  there  is  more  in  the 
universe  than  reason,  and  no  one  can  fully  rationalise 
experience.  We  postulate  rational  connexion  in  experience, 
and  up  to  a  point  we  find  it ;  yet  un rationalised  elements 


538  THE   PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

always  remain.  We  ourselves  are  more  than  intelligences : 
we  are  active  agents,  and  the  activity  of  will  cannot  be 
fully  stated  in  terms  of  reason.  If  the  consciousness  of 
freedom  and  the  facts  of  experience  call  for  a  world  in 
which  are  open  possibilities,  and  where  the  self  can  make 
new  beginnings,  we  shall  not  reject  the  demand  because  it 
is  said  to  be  irrational.  And  if  it  be  objected  that  we  are 
sacrificing  the  principle  of  causal  connexion,  we  reply  that 
causal  connexion  is  right  enough  in  its  own  place,  but 
there  is  a  causality  of  freedom. 

Let  us  now,  at  the  risk  of  appearing  dogmatic,  give  a 
brief  statement  of  the  nature  of  human  freedom  as  we 
conceive  it.  Freedom  cannot  mean  the  liberty  of  indiffer- 
ence, for  a  will  that  is  indifferent  to  values,  and  can 
as  readily  will  the  good  as  the  bad,  would  not  be  a  moral 
will.  As  has  been  said,  the  free  will  is  not  blind,  and  it 
cannot  be  divorced  from  a  judgment  of  value  on  different 
possible  courses  of  action.1  Nor  again  can  man  figure  as 
a  personal  and  responsible  agent  unless  he  expresses  some 
aspect  of  his  character  in  his  actions.  Were  a  man's  acts 
of  volition  destitute  of  any  relation  to  his  character,  we 
could  attribute  as  little  ethical  significance  to  them  as  we 
do  to  his  acts  of  breathing.  To  sever  the  connexion  of  the 
will  with  character  is  to  make  man  an  unaccountable  being, 
and  to  render  moral  valuation  impossible.  The  key  to  the 
solution  of  the  problem  lies  in  the  relation  of  the  funda- 
mental self  to  character.  The  self  has  to  be  distinguished 
from  its  content;  it  owns  its  character  rather  than  is 
identical  with  it.  The  motives  with  which  this  basal  self 
identifies  itself  are  those  which  issue  from  the  character 
that  has  been  formed,  and  it  is  by  realising  one  motive  or 
another  that  the  act  of  will  becomes  bad  or  good.  But  the 
character  through  which  the  self  expresses  itself  is  not 
something  fixed  and  immutable  :  it  is  more  or  less  plastic 
and  growing.  And  so  long  as  it  is  not  a  perfectly  unified 
and  consistent  whole,  it  contains  within  it  certain  open 
possibilities,  which  may  lead  to  different  courses  of  action. 

1  Lotze,  Outlines  of  Practical  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.,  p.  46. 


HUMAN   FREEDOM    AND   EVIL  539 

The  agent  himself  is  not  fully  aware  of  all  the  possibilities 
in  his  character,  and  under  stress  of  temptation  sometimes 
falls  when  he  expected  to  stand.  It  is  these  open 
possibilities  which  make  the  act  of  choice  a  real  choice, 
and  explain  the  agent's  conviction  that  he  could  have  done 
otherwise.  But  in  opposition  to  certain  extreme  forms  of 
Libertarianism  two  points  must  be  emphasised.  (1)  The 
freedom  of  open  choice  belongs  to  a  stage  of  spiritual 
evolution.  It  does  not  exist  in  beings  who  have  not 
attained  to  self-consciousness  and  the  power  of  deliberation. 
Nor  is  it  conceivable  it  should  exist  in  a  perfect  personality 
like  God,  who  is  incapable  of  sin.  (2)  Again,  the  openness 
of  choice  in  self-conscious  persons  varies,  and  freedom  in 
this  sense  is  a  matter  of  degree.  This  freedom  to  choose 
between  different  courses  is  diminished  by  the  weakening 
of  self-consciousness  under  the  influence  of  passion  or 
through  the  dominance  of  mechanised  habit.  From  the 
side  of  the  object,  again,  the  scope  of  choice  may  be 
restricted  by  the  situation,  and  the  individual  will  some- 
times have  to  encounter  "  forced  options."  l  Moreover,  the 
ethical  development  of  character,  either  in  the  direction  of 
goodness  or  badness,  tends  to  restrict  open  possibilities. 
The  less  plastic  character  becomes,  the  greater  internal 
unity  and  coherency  it  achieves,  the  fewer  are  the  varia- 
tions which  it  admits,  and  the  smaller  the  likelihood  of 
new  beginnings.  The  ideal  is  perfect  self-determinism 
under  the  dominance  of  the  good  will.  But  freedom  of 
this  higher  kind  is  for  man  a  task  to  be  worked  out  by 
moral  effort.  It  is  a  goal  to  which  he  can  only  slowly 
approximate ;  and  he  has  to  move  towards  it  through  that 
stage  of  spiritual  evolution  where  possibilities  are  more  or 
less  open,  and  there  is  the  risk  of  failure  and  defeat. 

We  may   now  gather  up  the  results    of  this  discus- 
sion, and  exhibit  their  bearing  on  the  question  of  man's 

1  On  these  and  other  points  very  suggestive  remarks  will  be  found  in 
the  acute  and  able  volume  of  K.  Joel,  Der  Freie  Wille.  Miinchen,  1908. 
Joel  rightly  objects  to  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  freedom,  that  it  does  not 
admit  of  degrees. 


540  THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

responsibility  for  the  existence  of  moral  evil.  The 
moderate  and  qualified  form  of  indeterminism  here 
advocated  will  be  found,  I  think,  to  lighten  the  burden  of 
divine  responsibility  for  moral  evil,  though  it  does  not 
completely  solve  the  mystery  of  its  presence  in  the  world. 

The  fact  that  man,  who  is  a  self-conscious  will,  is  able 
to  choose  good  or  evil,  and,  in  choosing  to  do  evil,  gives 
sin  a  place  in  the  world,  enables  us  to  say  that  God  is  not 
directly  concerned  in  its  production.  Even  to  say  that 
God  conditionally  wills  the  existence  of  moral  evil  is  an 
overstatement  of  the  case.  What  is  true  is,  that  he 
brought  about  a  development  which  carried  within  it  moral 
evil  as  a  possibility,  and  the  activity  of  the  human  will 
has  converted  this  possibility  into  an  actuality.  Any  theory 
of  sin  which  fails  to  take  into  account  the  contributory 
activity  of  man's  will  ignores  an  essential  factor  in  the 
situation.  Nevertheless  one  or  two  considerations  will 
make  it  plain  that  only  a  partial  solution  of  the  problem 
is  reached  in  this  way.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  a 
difficulty  in  conceiving  how  an  act  of  will  could  absolutely 
originate  sin  at  a  point  in  the  temporal  development.  For 
the  act  of  will  refers  us  back  to  a  pre-existing  desire 
and  a  susceptibility  to  temptation,  which  already  argue  a 
moral  defect.  Perhaps  we  are  here  face  to  face  with  the 
mystery  of  all  beginnings :  in  any  case  to  posit  an  original 
act  of  sin  in  the  transcendent  sphere  explains  nothing,  and 
is  itself  in  great  need  of  explanation.  Moreover,  another 
fact  which  was  noted  earlier  in  the  chapter  has  now  to  be 
kept  in  mind :  the  connexion  of  natural  and  moral  evil. 
Sin  supervenes  on  an  order  in  which  natural  evil  already 
exists ;  and  it  is  natural  evil,  in  the  form  of  unregulated 
desires,  lusts,  and  passions,  which  is  the  soil  from  which 
moral  evil  springs.  We  are  face  to  face  with  the  difficulty 
that  the  germs  of  moral  evil  appear  to  exist  in  the 
sensuous  nature  of  man.  On  the  other  hand,  man,  by  the 
free  exercise  of  his  will,  has  actualised  these  potencies  and 
made  sin  a  power  in  the  world.  Natural  evil  therefore 
makes  possible  the  existence  of  moral  evil,  but  only  the 


HUMAN    FREEDOM    AND    EVIL  541 

free  activity  of  man  develops  sin  in  the  full  sense  of  the 
word.  This  link  between  the  forms  of  evil  reminds  us 
that  the  two  theories  of  moral  evil  must  supplement  one 
another.  Neither  the  view  that  sin  is  implicated  in  the 
nature  of  a  finite  and  limited  being  like  man,  nor  the  view 
that  it  proceeds  solely  from  the  will  and  its  power  of  free 
choice,  is  by  itself  sufficient.  Both  contain  elements  of  truth  ; 
and  when  we  combine  them  we  reach  further  towards  a 
solution  of  the  problem  than  if  we  set  out  from  either  by 
itself.  The  natural  evils  which  flow  from  man's  finite  nature, 
if  they  do  not  directly  create  sin  at  least  furnish  the  condi- 
tions which  make  it  possible ;  while  the  specific  character 
of  sin  itself  is  due  to  the  agency  of  man's  will. 

In  the  end,  no  doubt,  God  must  have  a  certain  indirect 
responsibility  for  moral  evil,  and  of  course  a  more  direct 
responsibility  for  natural  evil.  And  though  we  refuse  to 
endorse  the  idea  that  sin  is  a  good  in  disguise,  we  can 
discover  grounds  for  believing  that  its  presence  in  the 
universe  is  not  inconsistent  with  an  overruling  purpose  of 
good.  Our  whole  outlook  implies  and  is  conditioned  by 
the  presence  of  evil  in  the  world,  and  our  moral  experience 
would  be  something  altogether  different  if  there  were  no 
sin  or  temptation  against  which  to  contend.  The  conscious- 
ness of  this  truth  seems  to  have  inspired  Plato's  remark, 
that  evil  could  not  pass  away  from  this  earthly  experience, 
for  there  must  always  be  something  opposite  to  the  Good.1 
To  say,  indeed,  that  natural  and  moral  evil  are  necessary 
instruments  of  good,  would  be  to  go  too  far.  Yet  the 
former,  by  thwarting  man's  purposes  and  intensifying  his 
needs,  is  a  stimulus  which  calls  forth  his  energies,  while 
the  latter,  by  assailing  his  spiritual  life,  spurs  him  to  the 
development  of  his  spiritual  powers.  The  '  spirit  that 
denies '  has  his  office,  as  Goethe  says  : — 

"Des  Menschen  Thiitigkeit  kann  allzu  leicht  erschlaffen, 

Er  liebt  sicli  bald  die  unbedingte  Huh ; 
Drum  geb'  ich  gern  ihm  den  Gesellen  zu, 

Der  reizt  und  wirkt  und  muss  als  Teufel  schaffen." 

1  Theaet,  176  A. 


542  THE   PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

If  spiritual  life  is  to  be  a  process  of  development, 
therefore  a  movement  which  advances  from  a  lesser  to  a 
greater  good,  the  possibility  of  moral  evil  is  involved.  For 
spiritual  development,  as  we  have  steadily  maintained,  is 
not  an  automatic  process :  it  is  a  movement  which  is 
rooted  in  freedom,  and  advances  to  its  goal  through  the 
free  preference  on  the  part  of  individuals  of  the  better  to 
the  worse.  A  development  where  progress  is  not  the  law 
but  the  vocation  of  free  spirits  would  not  be  intelligible, 
if  the  evil  were  not  opposed  to  the  good,  and  man  had  not 
to  face  the  temptation  and  the  risk  of  being  untrue  to 
himself.  There  is  merit  in  overcoming  when  we  have  to 
encounter  real  obstacles  and  to  face  real  perils.  A  true 
progress  of  this  kind,  though  beset  by  hazards  and  including 
within  it  temporary  failures  and  defeats,  may  well  have 
seemed  something  greater  and  more  valuable  in  the  eyes 
of  God  than  an  evolution  governed  throughout  by  a  cast- 
iron  law.  If  so,  then  the  possibility  of  sin  would  be 
accepted  as  the  condition  of  a  higher  kind  of  good.  For 
ourselves  we  cannot  but  think  that  to  choose  freely,  to 
take  risks,  and  to  win  by  personal  struggle  against  tempta- 
tion, is  the  way  to  a  higher  and  more  personal  good  than 
could  be  reached  were  human  wills  the  mere  instruments 
of  a  universal  law  of  evolution. 

Sin  exists  to  be  overcome,  and  it  is  the  vocation  of  the 
spiritual  man  to  overcome  it.  The  train  of  thought  we 
have  been  following  appears  to  lead  to  the  postulate  that 
evil  will  be  overcome.  If  sin  is  destined  to  remain  in 
eternal  antagonism  to  the  good,  then  it  is  hard  to  reconcile 
its  existence  with  the  ethical  character  of  God.  The  stress 
of  the  problem,  however,  is  sensibly  relieved,  when  we 
suppose  the  emergence  of  moral  evil  belongs  to  a  stage  in 
the  evolution  of  spirit  where  it  furnishes  a  spiritual  trial 
and  test  for  the  developing  self-consciousness.  But  sin  is 
no  rival  principle  ruling  in  its  own  right :  it  exists  as  an 
obstacle  to  progress,  although  even  at  its  strongest  it 
cannot  permanently  resist  the  power  of  goodness.  "  The 
moment  the  true  character  of  any  form  of  evil  is  apparent 


OPTIMISM    AND    PESSIMISM  543 

that  moment  the  struggle  to  overcome  it  begins." 1  And 
the  lesson  of  history  appears  to  be 'that,  when  evil  becomes 
concentrated  and  intense,  it  quickens  by  reaction  the 
superior  forces  of  the  good,  which  in  the  long  run  prevail. 
The  conflict  of  the  good  against  the  evil  is  '  a  warfare  long 
drawn  out/  but  on  the  whole  it  is  a  hopeful  warfare.  So 
it  is  that  the  historic  life  gives  us  the  opportunity  freely 
to  fulfil  our  '  high  calling '  through  strenuous  endeavour. 
Despite  the  presence  of  sin  with  all  its  marring  effects, 
there  is  room  for  an  optimistic  view  of  the  world.  Let  us 
try  to  justify  this  statement. 

E. — OPTIMISM  AND  PESSIMISM. 

"  We  bid  you  hope,"  said  Goethe.  Our  right  to  take  a 
hopeful  view  of  life,  to  affirm  that  "  things  work  together 
for  good,"  is  a  far-reaching  question  which  raises  profound 
issues.  To  generalise  in  these  matters  is  tempting,  but  to 
secure  a  really  adequate  basis  for  generalisation  is  difficult. 
To  value  life  in  general  is  a  baffling  business,  and  the 
inclination  to  allow  our  personal  experience  to  colour  our 
whole  outlook  is  well  nigh  irresistible.  Moreover,  the  facts 
are  not  simple,  and  against  facts  which  tell  in  one  way  we 
can  set  facts  which  tell  in  another  way.  There  are  things 
in  the  world  which  make  the  soul  hopeful,  and  there  are 
things  which  make  it  exceeding  sorrowful ;  and  it  depends 
greatly  on  which  side  of  experience  he  likes  to  linger,  what 
a  man's  verdict  on  life  will  be.  Hence  the  emphasis  due 
to  individual  experience  has  a  decided  influence  on  the 
judgment  of  value.  Probably  most  people  who  strive 
honestly  to  be  dispassionate,  will  agree  that  the  truth  lies 
neither  in  pure  optimism  nor  in  pure  pessimism.  Our 
world  is  a  commingling  of  light  and  shadow ;  yet  even 
where  the  shadows  lie  deepest  there  are  tokens  which  bid 
us  hope. 

Pessimism,  like  many  other   things,  is   both  old  and 

1  Ward,  The  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  376.     The  whole  chapter  deserves  careful 
reading. 


544  THE    PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

new.  Before  our  era  the  pessimistic  spirit  deeply  coloured 
the  Buddhist  vision  of  life ;  and  the  Hebrew  Preacher,  a 
sad  and  disillusioned  man,  looked  forth  on  a  world  full  of 
weariness,  a  world  where  all  was  vanity  and  a  striving 
after  wind.  In  the  poetry  both  of  the  classical  and  the 
modern  world  the  note  of  melancholy  constantly  recurs, 
suggesting  that  beneath  the  bright  surface  of  life  there 
moves  an  undercurrent  of  sadness. 

"The  world,  which  seems 
To  lie  before  us  like  a  land  of  dreams, 
So  various,  so  beautiful,  so  new, 
Hath  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light, 
Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain." 

From  poetry,  however,  we  look  rather  for  a  spiritual 
impression  of  experience,  reflected  in  the  medium  of  the 
poet's  mood,  than  for  a  reasoned  criticism  of  life.  Now,  if 
Pessimism  is  to  justify  itself  as  a  theoiy  of  life,  it  must 
rest,  not  on  a  temperamental  and  impressionist  picture  of 
experience,  but  on  a  philosophic  basis.  To  supply  this 
basis  was  the  aim  of  Schopenhauer  and  his  follower  Von 
Hartmann.  We  are  invited  to  believe  that  the  pessimism 
of  these  writers  represents  an  objective  and  fairly  balanced 
view  of  life  and  human  experience,  and  is  not  the  mere 
reflexion  of  personal  feelings.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  this. 
The  natural  gloom  of  Leopardi  and  the  morose  and  em- 
bittered disposition  of  Schopenhauer  had  undoubtedly  an 
influence  on  their  theory  of  life.  The  youth  who  sees  the 
world  in  a  rosy  light,  happy  in  the  consciousness  of  an 
answered  affection,  is  personal  in  his  optimism  no  doubt. 
But  so  was  Schopenhauer  when  he  fiercely  assailed  optimism 
as  "  a  bitter  mockery  of  the  unspeakable  suffering  of  man- 
kind." Men  are  swayed  by  their  moods,  and  they  colour 
with  them  the  wider  world  around  them.  Under  the 
influence  of  sorrow,  suffering,  and  disappointment,  the 
optimist  becomes  for  the  time  being  a  pessimist,  and  finds 
life  unprofitable.  So  Luther,  the  protagonist  of  faith,  in 
the  end  confessed :  "  I  am  utterly  weary  of  life.  I  pray 
the  Lord  will  come  forthwith  and  carry  me  hence."  And 


OPTIMISM    AND   PESSIMISM  545 

Goethe,  the  apostle  of  hope,  reports :  "  I  can  affirm  that 
during  the  whole  of  my  seventy-five  years,  I  have  not  had 
four  weeks'  genuine  well-being."1  If  the  judgments  we 
pass  on  our  own  experience  thus  reflect  our  mood,  the 
same  is  also  true  when  we  pass  judgment  on  the  larger 
experience  of  men.  A  man  struggling  with  poverty  and 
ill-health  is  prone  to  think  poorly  of  life  in  general. 

The  pessimist  is,  of  course,  well  aware  that,  if  he  is  to 
argue  his  case  plausibly,  he  must  do  so  on  wider  grounds 
than  those  of  personal  feeling.  But  the  endeavour  to 
justify  Pessimism  by  drawing  up  a  calculus  of  pleasures 
and  pains,  and  by  showing  that  on  the  balance  the  pains 
are  far  in  excess  of  the  pleasures,  is  not  successful.  The 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  framing  such  a  calculus  are 
insuperable.  How,  to  begin  with,  is  it  possible  to  fix  a 
standard  or  unit  of  pleasure- value  ?  There  is  no  common 
measure  in  pleasures  by  which  to  evaluate  them ;  and  even 
though  you  had  a  standard,  how  could  you  apply  it  to 
pleasures  which  are  notoriously  different  in  quality  ?  The 
intrinsic  difficulties  of  a  hedonistic  calculus  are  attested  by 
the  fact  that  no  serious  attempt  has  ever  been  made  to 
construct  one.  To  say  that  the  pains  of  life  are  quantita- 
tively in  excess  of  the  pleasures,  or  vice  versd,  must  there- 
fore be  reckoned  an  ex  cathedrd  assertion  for  which  no 
definite  proof  can  be  given.  Nor  will  it  help  matters  to 
venture  on  the  generalisation  that  pain  is  the  positive 
element,  and  that  pleasure  merely  denotes  the  absence  of 
pain.  This  theory  is  psychologically  false.  Many  pleasures 
are  certainly  positive,  and  it  would  be  misplaced  ingenuity 
to  try  to  prove  the  contrary. 

Schopenhauer  saw  it  was  important  to  connect  his 
pessimistic  Weltanschauung  with  a  metaphysical  and 
psychological  theory.  One  great  source  of  hope  for  man- 
kind has  been  its  religious  faith.  This  faith  has  been  the 
fresh  spring  of  uplifting  thoughts  and  of  comfort  in  dark 
hours.  For  Schopenhauer  religious  faith  was  a  pernicious 

1  Vid.   James,    Varieties  of  Beliyious  Experience,  p.   135,  where  the 
passages  are  quoted. 

35 


546  THE    PROBLEM    OF    EVIL 

illusion,  and  he  would  have  none  of  it.  In  his  theory 
there  is  no  personal  God :  an  irrational  and  unconscious 
Will  is  the  ground  and  substance  of  the  world.  Hence 
there  can  be  no  talk  of  Wisdom  and  a  shaping  Purpose  at 
the  heart  of  things,  nor  any  room  to  expect  that  the  historic 
process  will  reveal  a  growing  good.  Schopenhauer  com- 
pletes his  metaphysics  by  a  psychology  of  the  will  which 
directly  leads  to  pessimism.  Thought  and  idea  are  only 
secondary  products  of  will  in  man ;  and  it  is  the  very 
nature  of  will  to  be  an  empty  and  aimless  striving.  One 
desire  arises  in  us  after  another,  and  we  are  doomed  to  the 
futile  task  of  trying  to  satisfy  what  can  never  be  satisfied. 
So  man  is  condemned  to  the  pain  of  unsatiated  desire,  and 
the  experience  in  which  he  dreamed  to  find  fulness  of  joy 
proves  utterly  hollow  and  disappointing. 

Schopenhauer's  psychology  is  just  as  onesided  as  his 
metaphysics,  and  it  shows  the  devices  to  which  the 
pessimist  is  led  in  order  to  maintain  his  position.  "..Tha 
will  described  by  the  pliiliHupln-r  <»!'  pessimism  is  not  the 
will  of  a  In-all  hy  human  being,  but  of  a  moody  and  spoilt 
cliiM."1  Every  human  U-in^  has  experience  of  weariness 
and  suffering;  but  there  are  few  who  cannot  set  over 
against  this  times  of  quiet  happiness,  hours  of  satisfaction 
with  tasks  accomplished.  Need  does  not  perforce  spell 
misery  ;  and  there  may  be  a  pleasure  in  satisfying  wants 
although  the  satisfaction  is  not  final  and  complete.  It 
is  not  desire  which  makes  men  wretched,  but  desire  for 
the  wrong  things ;  and  people  do  not  become  soured  and 
bitter  because  they  have  hoped  and  striven,  but  because 
they  have  done  so  in  vain.  Schopenhauer  tries  to  frighten 
us  with  the  spectre  of  endless  desire,  and  to  make  it  a 
justification  for  his  sombre  view  of  life.  But  we  have 
only  to  ask  ourselves  whether  human  persons  would  enjoy 
a  higher  well-being  were  there  nothing  left  to  desire,  to 
see  the  fallacy.  There  is  nothing  in  the  spectacle  of  human 
failure  to  find  any  perfect  satisfaction  on  earth  which 
conflicts  with  faith  in  a  divine  government  of  things.  A 

1  Paulseu,  System  of  Ethics,  Eng.  tr.,  p.  294. 


OPTIMISM    AND    PESSIMISM  547 

human  life  destitute  of  aspiration  and  endeavour  would 
not  be  great  or  good :  it  would  be  mean  and  brutish. 
The  condition  desiderated  by  the  pessimist  is  that  which 
suits  a  healthy  animal  rather  than  a  living  soul.  The 
desires  and  aspirations  of  men,  even  though  they  never 
close  in  a  full  satisfaction,  are,  rightly  regarded,  a  witness 
to  the  greatness  of  man;  and  they  signify  something 
higher  and  better  than  mere  repletion.  On  the  whole 
the  case  for  pessimism  must  be  judged  to  break  down : 
the  evils  of  life  are  balanced  by  goods,  and  there  are 
possibilities  of  greater  good  as  the  reward  of  loyal  en- 
deavour. 

The  pure  optimist  steadily  regards  the  other  side  of 
the  picture  and  minimises  the  evils  of  life.  That  there 
are  evils  he  cannot  of  course  deny,  but  suffering,  he  thinks, 
is  easily  outweighed  in  the  scale  by  happiness.  This  is 
the  facile  Optimism  represented  by  the  spirit  of  Pope's 
aphorism  :  "  All  partial  evil  universal  good."  The  optimist 
of  this  type  hopes  much  from  progress,  which  he  deems 
inevitable;  he  exalts  the  blessings  of  education,  and  he 
has  a  great  deal  to  say  about  the  widening  diffusion  of 
happiness  which  accompanies  the  spread  of  civilisation. 
With  the  development  of  culture,  it  is  maintained,  goes 
an  increase  of  happiness,  alike  in  the  individual  and  the 
race.  And  we  are  reminded  how  the  spread  of  scientific 
knowledge  has  liberated  the  human  mind  from  a  host  of 
foolish  fears  and  degrading  superstitions.  All  this,  it  is 
said,  justifies  us  in  taking  a  very  hopeful  view  of  human 
life. 

There  are  several  considerations,  however,  which  the 
optimist  overlooks.  For  one  thing  it  is  not  by  any  means 
clear,  that  the  experienced  feeling  of  happiness  increases 
with  civilisation.  To  us  the  life  of  the  savage  seems  '  nasty, 
brutish,  and  short/  but  the  savage  himself  does  not  feel 
it  to  be  so,  and  he  is  probably  as  happy  in  his  own  way 
as  the  civilised  man  is  in  his  way.  Neither  would  willingly 
change  places  with  the  other.  Again,  while  advancing 
culture  enables  man  to  satisfy  wants  which,  at  an  earlier 


548  THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

and  ruder  stage,  he  could  not  do,  it  does  not  follow  that 
this  means  a  net  increase  in  human  happiness.  Progress 
in  civilisation  creates  new  desires  calling  for  satisfaction, 
and  the  man  of  the  present  day  is  made  miserable  by  the 
absence  of  some  comfort  or  convenience  which  his  ancestors 
were  perfectly  content  to  do  without.  And  many  will 
doubt  whether,  in  this  modern  age  of  mechanical  invention 
and  technical  ingenuity,  life  has  not  grown  rapid  and 
superficial  rather  than  deeper  and  richer.  The  sufferings 
caused  by  oppression,  so  familiar  in  the  ancient  and 
mediaeval  world,  have  not  been  banished  from  modern 
society :  they  have  assumed  new  forms.  The  unspeakably 
brutal  treatment  of  unoffending  lower  races  by  so-called 
civilised  peoples  in  quite  recent  times  is  a  testimony  to 
the  wickedness  from  which  men  do  not  shrink  in  their 
lust  for  gold.  When  riot  and  anarchy  break  loose  in  a 
civilised  community,  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  passions 
which  slumber  beneath  the  fair  surface  of  society.  Re- 
flexions like  these  should  warn  us  against  an  exuberant 
optimism. 

From  a  purely  empirical  standpoint  it  is  hard  to  reach 
a  decisive  conclusion  on  this  subject.  Probably  most 
people  who  consider  the  matter  with  an  open  mind  will 
incline  to  a  qualified  optimism.  Human  life  is  far  from 
what  it  ought  to  be,  but  it  seems  to  be  growing  better ; 
and  though  evil  does  not  vanish,  it  stands  out  in  sharper 
contrast  to  the  good.  Whatever  be  the  balance  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  mankind  on  the  whole  appears  to  move  towards 
a  higher  well-being.  So  we  may  suppose  our  candid 
observer  to  argue.  But  the  truth  is,  that  on  merely 
empirical  grounds  we  cannot  draw  a  perfectly  sure  con- 
clusion. It  will  make  all  the  difference  to  our  outlook 
on  life,  to  our  hope  for  the  future  and  our  faith  in 
progress,  whether  we  regard  the  world  from  a  religious 
point  of  view  or  not.  The  Christian  redemptive  view  of 
the  world,  for  instance,  fully  recognises  the  existence  of 
evil,  but  none  the  less  it  is  distinctly  optimistic.  But 
Christian  Optimism  does  not  arise  out  of  an  induction 


OPTIMISM    AND    PESSIMISM  549 

from  experience :  it  springs  from  faith  in  the  character 
of  God.  This  faith  is  indissolubly  linked  with  hope.  It 
is  of  the  highest  consequence  whether  we  bring  religious 
postulates  to  our  view  of  life  or  not ;  whether  we  conceive 
the  Ground  of  the  world  to  be  a  personal  God  or  a  blind 
and  irrational  Will.  Our  attitude  to  life,  too,  will  much 
depend  on  whether  we  take  it  as  something  ultimate 
and  complete,  or  believe  that  mundane  experience  points 
beyond  itself.  So  the  argument  between  Optimism  and 
Pessimism,  when  followed  to  its  issues,  passes  into  the 
larger  problem  of  the  final  Destiny  of  Man. 


CHAPTER   XV. 
THE  PROGRESS  AND  DESTINY  OF  MAN. 

A. — THE  GOAL  OF  HUMAN  HISTORY. 

WE  have  seen,  in  the  last  chapter,  that  the  perplexities 
which  gather  round  the  presence  of  evil  in  the  world  are 
sensibly  diminished  when  we  regard  evil  as  something  to 
be  overcome,  and  actually  in  process  of  being  overcome. 
There  is  a  progress,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  life  of  mankind. 
This  conception  of  progress,  however,  requires  for  its  justi- 
fication some  theory  of  the  destiny  of  man,  some  notion  of 
the  goal  to  which  history  is  moving.  It  may  be  a  fully 
developed  theory  is  beyond  our  scope,  but  a  discussion  of 
the  subject  is  needed  to  complete  our  argument,  and  the 
facts  themselves  seem  to  call  for  it.  Life,  whether  you 
regard  it  from  the  individual  or  the  collective  standpoint,  is 
incomplete  and  broken,  and  points  beyond  itself.  When 
you  try  to  spell  out  its  meaning  and  value,  you  are  driven 
to  ask,  not  only  whence  it  comes,  but  whither  it  tends. 
The  real  significance  of  any  process  of  development  cannot 
be  discerned  apart  from  its  goal  or  completion,  for  develop- 
ment is  far  more  than  change. 

Yet  when  we  ask,  what  is  the  ultimate  destiny  to  which 
the  human  race  is  moving,  we  find  that  materials  on 
which  to  base  a  judgment  are  scanty  indeed.  Neither  the 
past  nor  the  present  yields  evidence  in  the  light  of  which 
it  might  be  possible  to  form  a  reasoned  conclusion  in 
regard  to  the  future.  So  far  as  men  have  expressed  ideas 
on  the  subject,  these  reveal  the  movements  of  human  faith 
and  hope  rather  than  the  deductions  of  logical  thought. 


550 


THE   GOAL   OF   HISTORY  551 

In  truth  this  problem,  like  all  problems  which  concern 
the  future,  can  receive  no  answer  which  does  not  involve  a 
demand  on  faith. 

While  the  question  is  an  insistent  one  for  the  mature 
self-consciousness,  it  was  not  a  question  which  was  raised 
early,  and  it  is  hardly  even  foreshadowed  in  primitive 
culture.  To  ask  for  the  goal  of  human  development  is  to 
assume  some  idea  of  the  solidarity  of  the  race,  and  this  is 
a  late  idea.  It  played  no  part  in  tribal  culture,  and  even 
at  the  stage  of  national  religion  it  still  remained  in  the 
background.  So  highly  civilised  a  people  as  the  ancient 
Greeks  did  not  occupy  themselves  with  the  subject ;  and 
a  representative  thinker  like  Aristotle  is  content  to  suggest 
that  progress  may  move  in  cycles,  and  the  blessings  of 
culture  may  more  than  once  be  lost  and  found  again.  The 
Hebrew  mind,  again,  was  too  much  dominated  by  the 
thought  of  the  nation  to  consider  readily  the  question  of 
the  destiny  of  mankind ;  while  the  Hindu,  with  a  slender 
sense  for  historic  values,  did  not  advance  beyond  the  con- 
ception of  an  absorption  of  all  individuals  in  the  universal 
Spirit.  The  truth  is,  that  only  with  the  advent  of 
Christianity  was  the  problem  of  the  future  of  the  race  dis- 
tinctly put  and  definitely  answered.  The  universalism  of 
the  Christian  faith,  which  transcended  the  distinctions  of 
Jew  and  Gentile,  bond  and  free,  gave  the  eye  that  wider 
range  of  vision  which  included  the  fortunes  of  the  whole 
race.  No  doubt  this  conception,  as  it  developed  in  the 
minds  of  Christians,  was  at  first  entangled  with  beliefs  of 
a  crude  and  temporary  character.  The  apocalyptic  ideas 
which  were  current  in  Jewish  thought  were  reflected  in 
the  speech  and  literature  of  the  early  Christians,  and  men 
fancied  that  the  Second  Advent  and  the  end  of  the  age 
were  at  hand.  They  looked  for  a  sudden  and  catas- 
trophic rather  than  a  gradual  and  spiritual  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  These  anxious  expectations  and 
high-strung  hopes  were  doomed  to  disappointment,  and  it 
was  under  the  shadow  of  disillusionment  that  the  vision  of 
the  Church  was  slowly  purified.  Clear  cut  from  alien 


552  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY   OF   MAN 

elements  the  outlines  of  the  heavenly  kingdom  were 
gradually  revealed  to  human  eyes — a  kingdom  not 
descending  swiftly  from  above,  but  inwardly  and  increas- 
ingly developing  in  the  hearts  and  lives  of  men.  The 
symbol  was  not  the  sign  in  the  sky,  but  the  leaven  silently 
operating  till  the  whole  was  leavened.  The  expansion  of 
Christianity  in  ancient  society  gave  force  and  assurance  to 
the  spiritual  ideal  of  a  divine  kingdom  of  redeemed  human- 
ity ruled  by  the  law  of  love.  For  this  kingdom  was  giving 
visible  witness  of  its  presence  and  power ;  it  was  coming 
now,  and  would  come  more  and  more.  Here  was  an  ideal 
which  inspired  the  thoughts,  and  here  was  a  task  which 
claimed  the  labour  of  the  hands.  So  the  Christian  con- 
ception of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  which  is  the  destiny  of 
man,  is  in  one  sense  future,  for  it  is  as  yet  unfulfilled,  and 
denotes  the  ideal  goal  of  humanity ;  but,  in  another  sense, 
it  is  already  present,  since  it  works  as  a  purifying  and  up- 
lifting power  in  the  souls  of  men  and  in  the  heart  of 
society.1 

The  Christian  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  destiny 
of  mankind  is  essentially  a  religious  solution,  and  is  in- 
dependent of  speculative  ideas  or  scientific  theories.  It 
rests  on  that  faith  in  the  spiritual  character  of  God  and 
man  and  their  inner  affinity,  which  became  the  assured 
possession  of  the  Christian  consciousness  through  the  life 
and  teaching  of  Christ.  The  goal  is  spiritual  and  tran- 
scendent, for  man  is  a  spirit  and  derives  his  being  from  the 
transcendent  God  who  is  the  Father  of  Spirits.  We  can- 
not fairly  object  that  this  view  of  human  destiny  is  not  a 
reasoned  conclusion  but  a  judgment  of  faith.  It  could  not 
be  otherwise ;  for  the  postulates  of  religion  issue  from 
spiritual  experience  and  vision,  not  from  argument.  But 
though  we  cannot  reason  to  this  result,  it  might  still  be 
asked  if  there  are  no  considerations  which  tend  to  support 
it.  An  appeal  is  often  made  to  the  authoritative  character 
of  Christian  revelation.  Those  who  are  not  disposed  to 
recognise  an  appeal  of  this  kind,  the  modern  theologian 

1  Cp.  Lipsius,  Dogmatik,  p.  862. 


THE   GOAL   OF    HISTORY  553 

might  ask  to  consider,  how  far  Christian  postulates  are 
verified  by  their  working  in  experience.  The  ideal  King- 
dom of  God  is  not  a  dream  but  a  working-value.  More- 
over, it  is  the  living  consciousness  of  the  worth  of  the 
spiritual  life  itself  which  inspires  the  claim  of  faith  that 
the  spiritual  values  shall  not  be  lost.  For  the  religious 
consciousness  it  is  a  contradiction  that  the  good  in  the 
individual  and  humanity  should  be  rudely  annihilated  by 
alien  forces,  and  never  come  to  its  full  fruition.  Hence  a 
fully  developed,  spiritual  faith  carries  with  it  the  convic- 
tion, that  the  movement  of  human  progress  cannot  finally 
end  in  failure  and  defeat.  However  long  and  devious  the 
way,  however  often  the  journey  be  fraught  with  disappoint- 
ment and  pain,  mankind  will  come  to  its  divinely  appointed 
goal. 

(1)  Those  who  approach  the  problem  apart  from  the 
values  of  religious  experience  will  still  be  unsatisfied. 
There  is  something  visionary,  they  think,  in  the  conception, 
and  they  want  to  deal  with  the  question  in  the  sober  light 
of  scientific  knowledge.  It  may  be  well  for  us,  therefore, 
to  ask  whether  science  can  make  any  contribution  to  the 
discussion  of  the  problem.  One  cannot  doubt  the  answer 
must  be,  that  science,  which  eschews  speculation,  is  power- 
less to  give  us  any  sure  word  on  man's  origin  or  his 
destiny.  From  the  standpoint  of  naturalism,  man  appears 
to  be  the  outcome  of  a  long  evolution,  a  process  conditioned 
by  the  environment  and  the  struggle  for  existence.  In 
its  actual  origin  life  is  a  mystery ;  but,  so  far  as  scientists 
can  trace  its  development,  it  is  everywhere  dependent  on 
natural  conditions  and  cosmic  forces.  How  long  the 
process  of  evolution  will  continue,  whether  the  develop- 
mental movement  is  not  doomed  ere  long  to  be  superseded 
by  one  of  retrogression,  these  are  things,  the  scientific  man 
tells  us,  which  will  be  finally  determined  by  the  action  of 
those  natural  laws  which  make  life  possible.  To  predict 
very  definitely  how  long  organised  beings  will  continue  to 
exist  is,  of  course,  not  practicable,  but  the  scientist  is 
tolerably  sure  that  the  principle  of  the  dissipation  of 


554  PROGRESS    AND   DESTINY    OF   MAN 

energy  will  at  last  produce  a  state  of  things  on  the  earth, 
and  throughout  the  solar  system,  in  which  universal  death 
reigns.1  On  this  view  the  ultimate  arbiters  of  human 
destiny  are  cosmic  forces  and  conditions :  this  being  so, 
no  doubt  in  the  long  run  these  will  cause  the  arrest  of 
man's  development,  and  then  bring  about  a  process  of 
decline  ending  in  extinction.  "  The  theory  of  evolution 
encourages  no  millenial  expectations.  If,  for  millions  of 
years,  our  globe  has  taken  the  upward  road,  yet,  some 
time,  the  summit  will  be  reached  and  the  downward  route 
will  be  commenced.  The  most  daring  imagination  will 
hardly  venture  on  the  suggestion  that  the  power  and 
intelligence  of  man  can  ever  arrest  the  procession  of  the 
great  year."2  And  a  contemporary  thinker  expresses 
himself  in  the  same  strain.  "  That  all  the  labours  of  the 
ages,  all  the  devotion,  all  the  inspiration,  all  the  noonday 
brightness  of  human  genius,  are  destined  to  extinction  in 
the  vast  death  of  the  solar  system,  and  that  the  whole 
temple  of  man's  achievement  must  inevitably  be  buried 
beneath  the  debris  of  a  universe  in  ruins — all  these  things, 
if  not  quite  beyond  dispute,  are  yet  so  nearly  certain,  that 
no  philosophy  which  rejects  them  can  hope  to  stand." 3 
The  message  of  naturalism,  it  would  seem,  is,  that  the  final 
destiny  of  man  is  determined  by  the  action  of  blind  and 
ruthless  forces.  The  working  of  these  elemental  forces 
apparently  admits  of  no  hope  that  there  will  be  an 
ultimate  conservation  of  values:  mechanical  laws  are 
indifferent  to  ethical  considerations.  The  conclusion  is 
discouraging  and  pessimistic ;  but  we  must  not  forget  that 
the  man  of  science,  when  he  deals  in  prediction,  cannot 
give  proof  of  his  prophecies.  Although  he  may  feel  very 
sure  the  forces  of  nature  will  continue  to  work  in  the 
future  as  they  have  done  in  the  past,  still  the  assertion 

1  Recent  investigations  into  the  nature  of  matter  and  of  the  elements 
have  made  men  of  science  less  inclined  to  speak  dogmatically  on  the  duration 
of  the  world  and  life. 

2  Huxley's  Collected  Essays,  vol.  ix.  p.  85. 

8  The  Hon.  Bertrand  Russell  in  his  essay  on  The  Free  Man's  Worship. 


THE   GOAL    OF    HISTORY  555 

that  they  will  do  so  is  none  the  less  an  act  of  faith  on  his 
part.  And  there  is  always  the  possibility  that  the  in- 
terpretation of  the  past,  on  the  basis  of  which  he  forecasts 
the  future,  may  be  incomplete  and  therefore  defective. 
The  failure  of  prediction,  through  failure  to  take  into 
account  all  the  relevant  factors  of  the  problem,  is  a 
familiar  enough  fact  in  the  history  of  science.  In  the 
present  instance  naturalism  certainly  ignores  important 
considerations.  It  wrongly  assumes  the  mechanical  con- 
ception of  nature  is  perfectly  true ;  in  reality  it  is  an 
abstract  and  hypothetical  way  of  regarding  things,  useful, 
no  doubt,  for  certain  purposes.  And  it  neglects  to  allow 
for  the  truth  that,  if  man's  spiritual  life  is  not  a  product 
of  nature,  its  destiny  may  not  be  determined  by  material 
conditions.  What  the  natural  order  cannot  create,  it  may 
not  be  able  to  destroy.  Natural  science,  if  it  keeps  to  its 
right  role,  can  only  profess  ignorance  on  the  subject  of  man's 
destiny:  when  it  goes  beyond  this  and  draws  pessimistic 
inferences,  the  verdict  may  be  discounted  on  the  ground  of 
its  defective  understanding  of  the  principles  involved. 

(2)  Let  us  now  consider  how  far  philosophical  thinking 
can  yield  a  more  satisfying  answer  to  our  question.  So 
far  as  it  deals  with  the  problem,  it  does  so  through  a 
speculative  or  idealistic  theory  of  development.  In  an 
earlier  chapter  we  tried  to  describe  the  general  nature  of 
spiritual  development,  and  it  is  not  needful  to  cover  the 
same  ground  again.  Certain  speculative  conceptions  of 
human  development  we  saw  reason  to  reject.  Our  con- 
clusion was,  that  progress  is  not  a  rigorous  law ;  it  is  not 
a  principle  immanent  in  the  historic  life  which  infallibly 
brings  about  a  continuous  development.  Instead  of  this 
we  found  that  human  progress  was  rooted  in  the  endeavour 
of  personal  spirits :  it  was  a  vocation  to  adopt,  a  task  to 
fulfil,  not  an  inflexible  law  which  all  must  obey.  Conse- 
quently it  was  intelligible  that  progress  was  not  a  con- 
tinuous movement.  Advance  was  often  hampered,  and 
sometimes  arrested ;  and  there  were  even  periods  when 
the  tokens  pointed  to  retrogression  rather  than  to  progress. 


556  PROGRESS    AND   DESTINY   OF   MAN 

When  we  discard  the  idea  of  an  immanent  necessity 
controlling  the  movement  of  history  through  all  its  stages, 
we  sacrifice  the  right  to  assert  a  rigorous  predestination  of 
events.  But  by  abandoning  this  conception  we  preclude 
ourselves,  it  may  be  said,  from  assigning  any  distinct  goal 
to  the  historic  process.  Instead  of  a  determinate  move- 
ment we  have  a  process  perfectly  plastic  and  full  of 
indefinite  possibilities.  Have  we  not  committed  ourselves 
to  some  such  theory  as  M.  Bergson  has  sketched  in  his 
Creative  Evolution,  a  theory  according  to  which  the  uni- 
verse is  in  a  constant  process  of  creation,  and  the 
'gates  of  the  future*  are  never  closed  but  stand  wide 
open  ?  If  so,  then  it  will  be  said  we  have  sought  to 
take  from  man  a  sure  faith  in  ultimate  issues,  and  to 
replace  it  by  a  spirit  of  mere  adventure  or  hazard.  None 
can  foretell  how  the  voyage  will  end  when  the  possi- 
bilities are  so  various : — 

"It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  will  wash  us  down, 
It  may  be  we  shall  reach  the  Happy  Isles." 

You  cannot  prophesy,  we  shall  be  told,  when  the  risks 
are  so  great  and  the  prospects  so  vague.  In  a  world 
where  nothing  is  fixed,  there  is  no  room  to  trust  and  hope 
that  mankind  will  attain  to  some  definite  goal.  And  if 
there  is  no  assurance  for  the  future,  to  speak  of  a  goal  of 
history  is  a  phrase  without  meaning. 

Now  we  hold  that  we  cannot  eliminate  all  open 
possibilities  and  exclude  all  risks,  from  the  life  of  the 
individual  or  the  race.  And  rightly  so,  for  there  is 
something  repellent  in  a  universe  which  admits  of  no 
contingency  nor  of  free  initiative  in  human  agents.  But 
to  say  this  is  not  by  any  means  to  say,  that  the  historic 
process  is  something  formless  and  indefinite  which  may 
end  anywhere  and  anyhow.  We  do  not  commit  ourselves 
to  the  belief  that  the  progress,  so  far  visible  in  human 
history,  is  an  accident,  and  just  as  likely  to  cease  as  to 
continue.  The  sphere  of  possibilities  has  limits,  and,  as 
we  have  argued,  human  freedom  operates  within  conditions, 


THE   GOAL   OF   HISTORY  557 

these  conditions  exercising  a  controlling  influence  on  the 
general  line  of  development.  In  the  first  place,  the  meta- 
physical basis  on  which  development  takes  place  has  to 
be  kept  in  mind.  That  basis  is  not  an  indefinite  plurality 
of  isolated  individuals,  but  a  true  unity.  We  do  not  set 
out  from  a  mere  multiplicity  of  independent  centres  of 
experience,  but  from  a  plurality  of  individuals  interacting 
within  a  continuous  medium  and  systematically  inter- 
related, the  whole  system  of  finite  existences  ultimately 
depending  on  the  activity  of  a  Supreme  Ground.  Any 
line  of  development,  therefore,  must  be  conditioned  by  the 
dependent  character  of  the  individuals,  and  by  their 
relation  to  one  another  and  the  whole  within  which  they 
interact.  In  the  so-called  natural  world,  which  forms  by 
its  order  the  basis  of  human  development,  the  spontaneity 
of  its  elements  is,  if  we  may  use  the  expression,  sub- 
merged, and  their  action  and  reaction  wear  the  appear- 
ance of  mechanical  uniformity.  When  self-conscious 
beings  develop,  their  freedom  can  only  be  exercised  in 
harmony  with  the  working  of  the  order  on  which  they 
supervene.  Of  course  the  advent  of  the  self-conscious 
will  of  man  means  that  a  higher  factor  has  emerged  in 
the  history  of  the  world:  development  has  become  a 
conscious  task  instead  of  an  unconscious  process.  Yet,  as 
Lotze  used  to  insist,  the  alterations  brought  about  by  the 
human  will  on  the  course  of  nature  are  narrowly  limited, 
and  can  easily  be  balanced  in  the  general  economy.1  The 
possibilities  implied  in  the  exercise  of  freedom  must  fall 
within  the  comparatively  narrow  bounds  prescribed  by 
human  nature  and  character  as  they  exist  within  a  given 
environment. 

Again,  human  development,  though  it  is  rooted  in 
personal  endeavour,  is  none  the  less  a  teleological  move- 
ment ;  but  it  is  the  teleology  of  purpose  freely  fulfilled, 

1  Vid.  e.g.  ReligionspJiilosophie,  p.  61.  Professor  James,  in  a  well- 
known  passage  ( Will  to  Believe,  pp.  180-182),  argues  that  an  all-wise 
Providence,  like  an  absolutely  efficient  chess-player,  can  bring  about  the 
end  determined  whatever  moves  the  human  player  may  make. 


558  PROGRESS    AND    DESTINY   OF   MAN 

not  of  unconscious  growth.  There  would  be  no  progress 
unless  human  souls  responded  to  the  appeal  of  ideals,  and 
human  wills  were  consciously  directed  to  ends.  But  an 
end  or  ideal  which  harmonises  the  nature  of  man  is  no 
arbitrary  creation :  it  issues  from  the  God-given  nature  of 
man,  and  he  cannot  he  untrue  to  that  end  if  he  is  to  be 
true  to  himself.  An  individual  may  consciously  turn 
away  from  the  ideal,  but  he  is  powerless  to  win  inner 
satisfaction  from  the  life  of  sin.  If  there  be  progress, 
therefore,  it  must  be  in  the  direction  in  which  men  find 
an  increasing  self-fulfilment  and  a  fuller  harmony  of  their 
powers.  Hence  man  cannot  advance  to  his  true  self- 
fulfilment  by  any  way  save  the  one  way.  And  that  way 
is  the  way  of  the  divine  ideal.  In  spiritual  development 
the  ideal  does  not  work  in  the  form  of  an  impersonal 
principle :  it  moves  men  as  '  object  of  desire,'  and  it 
prevails  in  human  life  when  individuals  freely  identify 
themselves  with  it  and  loyally  strive  to  fulfil  its  demands. 
But  "  when  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish  " ;  and 
where  the  ideal  ceases  to  evoke  the  devotion  of  personal 
spirits,  the  springs  of  progress  fail.  The  fact  that  men 
mark  out  social  epochs  as  stagnant  or  decadent  is  itself  a 
witness  to  the  recognition  of  an  ideal  or  norm.  True,  the 
recognition  of  an  ideal  is  not  the  pledge  of  its  attainment. 
Our  assurance  of  its  fulfilment  lies  in  the  conviction  that 
human  endeavour  is  sustained  and  supplemented  by  the 
wider  and  deeper  working  of  God. 

It  will  not  be  denied  that  there  is  progress,  in  the 
sense  of  an  increasing  development  of  spiritual  capacities, 
visible  in  the  broad  movement  of  history.  But  if  there  is 
progress,  to  what  does  it  tend  ?  Where  lies  the  goal  by 
which  you  measure  the  distance  traversed  ?  This  is  not 
an  easy  question  to  answer,  and  some  have  fallen  back  on 
the  notion  that  the  ideal  is  just  progress  itself.  Con- 
tinuous development,  it  is  argued,  is  the  ultimate  test  of 
historic  value.  A  little  reflexion  will  show  that  the 
conception  of  progress  as  itself  the  end  is  too  inconsistent 
to  bear  the  brunt  of  criticism.  Progress  is  a  term  which 


THE   GOAL   OF   HISTORY  559 

needs  explanation,  and  you  cannot  explain  it  unless  you 
relate  it  to  something  beyond  itself.  The  nature  of 
advance  or  development  becomes  indistinguishable  from 
change,  if  there  is  no  definite  goal  to  which  it  tends  ;  the 
goal  is  the  standard  by  which  progress  is  discerned  and 
judged.  Progress  ceases  to  have  any  definite  meaning,  if 
it  does  not  signify  a  corning  nearer  to  a  determinate  goal. 
Those  who  deny  that  progress  has  an  end,  or  who  say  that 
progress  is  itself  the  end,  can  only  fall  back  on  arbitrary 
and  relative  ways  of  judging  historic  values.  One  historian 
sees  progress  where  another  finds  plain  evidence  of  de- 
terioration. The  valuations  conflict,  because  the  standards 
of  judgment  differ.  So  if  no  goal  of  development  be 
recognised,  those  who  evaluate  historic  phenomena  must 
have  recourse  to  a  purely  relative  mode  of  judging.  One 
historic  phenomenon  will  be  made  a  test  for  valuing 
another,  while  the  latter  in  turn  will  perform  a  like  office, 
and  in  the  result  there  will  be  no  coherency  because  there 
is  no  stable  principle  of  appreciation.  One  age  will  have 
one  standard  and  another  a  different  standard,  while  con- 
sistency there  will  be  none.1  In  this  way  we  are  plunged 
into  what  Eucken  has  suggestively  called  the  '  soulless 
relativity '  of  pure  historicism,  and  are  condemned  to  an 
ever  changing  fashion  in  valuation.  If  we  are  to  extricate 
ourselves  from  this  bewildering  entanglement,  we  must  try 
to  form  some  definite  conception  of  the  ideal  to  which 
human  development  points. 

Shall  we  then  think  of  human  progress  coming  to  a 
goal  in  some  condition  of  static  perfection  ?  The  difficul- 
ties which  beset  this  idea  have  been  suggested  in  an 
earlier  chapter.  For  men  constituted  as  they  are,  a  life 
of  realised  perfection,  where  all  endeavour  ceased,  would 
not  be  desirable.  In  our  present  environment  such  a  life 

1  The  following  passage  supplies  an  illustration.  "A  generation  ago  it 
was  the  reigning  opinion  that  there  is  nothing  good  in  politics  but  liberty, 
and  that  accordingly  in  history  all  those  periods  are  to  be  passed  over  and,  as 
it  were,  cancelled,  in  which  liberty  is  not  to  be  found."  Seeley,  Expansion 
qf  England,  1885,  p.  237. 


560  PROGRESS    AND    DESTINY    OF   MAN 

would  not  be  a  life  of  spiritual  fulness  for  us,  but  one  of 
sheer  weariness.  In  this  realisation  of  value  the  sense 
of  value  would  have  vanished.  But  there  is  a  further 
difficulty  connected  with  this  idea  of  a  mundane  goal  to 
human  progress.  It  would  be  a  consummation  reserved 
for  the  favoured  few,  for  those  '  heirs  of  all  the  ages '  who 
arrived  last  in  time.  That  vast  multitude  who  trod  the 
earth  on  an  earlier  day  would  be  doomed  to  pass  away, 
"  not  having  received  the  promises."  There  is  an  ethical 
contradiction  in  the  thought  that  unnumbered  generations 
have  come  and  gone,  destined  to  be  only  the  stepping 
stones  to  a  good  in  which  they  are  denied  a  share.  Surely 
individuals  and  stages  of  society  have  a  spiritual  value 
which  entitles  them  to  rank  for  something  better  than  a 
means  to  a  good  beyond  themselves  I  A  land  of  promise 
for  the  last,  while  the  many  who  prepared  the  way 
perished  in  the  wilderness — this  is  not  justice  ! 

We  shall  be  told,  however,  that  we  are  making  the 
fateful  error  of  introducing  into  history  a  false  dualism  of 
means  and  end.1  The  stages  of  the  historic  life,  it  is 
objected,  cannot  be  separated  and  contrasted  in  this  way. 
It  would  be  as  wrong,  for  instance,  to  say  that  youth  only 
exists  as  a  means  to  manhood,  as  it  would  be  to  declare 
that  manhood  only  exists  as  a  means  to  old  age.  And 
generally  regarded,  life  has  its  end  in  itself ;  hence  what 
we  call  stages  in  the  general  movement  of  civilised  life 
ought  not  to  be  artificially  construed  into  a  means  to 
something  beyond,  for  they  have  a  meaning  and  value  of 
their  own. 

In  replying  to  this  criticism  I  think  we  must  deny 
that  human  society,  at  any  of  its  stages,  has  that  intrinsic 
perfection  which  would  entitle  us  to  say  that  the  end  of 
life  is  being  realised  in  it.  In  every  epoch  of  civilisation 
the  note  of  dissatisfaction  is  heard,  and  human  wills  are 

1A  point  made  by  Hoffding.  Vid.  Religionsphilosophie,  pp.  50-51. 
Paulsen  argues  in  the  same  sense.  Perhaps  I  may  say  here  that,  in  this 
section,  1  have  been  helped  by  the  relevant  parts  of  Siebeck's  Religions- 
philosophic,  and  also  by  his  brochure,  Zur  ReligionsphUosophie. 


THE   GOAL   OF   HISTORY  561 

always  striving  after  some  better  order  of  things.  To 
assert  that  the  end  of  life  is  realised  in  any  existing  form 
of  society,  is  to  forget  that  every  social  system  is  hampered 
and  marred  by  the  presence  within  it  of  evil  and  sin. 
Were  evil  and  sin  only  good  under  another  name,  the  case 
might  be  different.  But  these  opposing  forces  imperatively 
demand  to  be  overcome  ;  and  in  the  face  of  this  urgent 
demand  it  is  a  shallow  optimism  to  proclaim  the  inherent 
perfection  of  any  stage  of  mundane  development.  The 
sway  of  sin  over  society  and  the  individual,  when  dis- 
passionately regarded,  is  sufficient  to  preclude  us  from 
thinking  the  end  of  life  is  being  achieved  anywhere  on 
earth.  We  seem  then  to  be  confronted  with  a  dilemma : 
the  destiny  of  humanity  is  not  being  fulfilled  in  the  stages 
of  its  history,  and  yet  a  goal  of  progress  cannot  consistently 
be  conceived  under  earthly  and  temporal  conditions.  We 
appear,  therefore,  to  be  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
goal  must  be  supramundane :  it  must  transcend  the 
earthly  order,  and  involve  a  transformation  of  the  present 
form  of  human  life. 

Society  is  a  spiritual  structure  whose  materials  are 
personal  lives  ;  and  if  a  perfected  society  is  to  become  real, 
personal  spirits  will  have  to  be  transformed  into  something 
higher  and  better  than  they  are  now.  The  key  to  this 
problem  must  therefore  be  found  in  an  intrinsic  relation  of 
souls  to  a  higher  spiritual  order.  In  this  connexion  we 
have  to  remember  that  persons  are  centres  of  spiritual 
value,  and  are  not  merely  a  means  to  the  social  good.  It 
would  be  true  to  say  that  the  end  of  society  is  the 
personal  good  of  individuals,  for  the  ethical  values  are  only 
living  and  real  in  the  persons  who. constitute  society.  In 
other  words,  though  the  good  of  the  individual  can  only  be 
realised  through  the  system  of  social  relations,  society  itself 
may  be  rightly  conceived  as  the  medium  for  the  develop- 
ment of  personal  values.  The  inference  we  draw  from  the 
significance  and  value  of  personality  is,  that  man  cannot  be 
a  purely  earthly  being :  his  destiny  lies  in  the  supra- 
mundane  sphere.  And  if  the  goal  of  history  is  an  ideal 


562  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY   OF   MAN 

society,  this  transcendent  social  order  postulates  some  form 
of  personal  immortality.  Without  this  postulate  the 
transition  from  a  mundane  to  a  supramundane  order  could 
not  be  ensured. 


B. — THE  IDEA  OF  IMMORTALITY. 

Plato  has  made  the  remark  that  the  nature  of  the  soul 
and  its  destiny  had  been  the  occasion  of  much  scepticism.1 
And  the  remark  would  be  as  true  to-day  as  it  was  in  the 
age  of  Plato.  In  a  matter  where  clear  proof  is  notably 
absent,  where  considerations  which  point  in  one  direction 
can  be  matched  by  considerations  which  point  in  another 
direction,  it  is  no  surprise  to  find  much  perplexity  and 
uncertainty.  Nor  does  it  seem  likely  that  the  doctrine  of 
immortality  will  ever  pass  from  the  sphere  of  faith  to 
become  one  of  the  assured  and  universally  accepted  truths 
of  reason.  No  doubt  the  tendency  to  dogmatic  denial  is 
waning :  as  the  fruit  of  recent  discussion  the  opinion  has 
steadily  been  growing,  that  science  is  quite  unable  to  dis- 
prove the  possibility  of  immortality.  On  the  other  hand, 
even  among  those  who  accept  the  idea,  the  conviction  is 
becoming  more  marked,  that  men  cannot  form  any  clear 
and  consistent  representation  of  the  nature  of  the  life  after 
death.  The  reaction  against  anthropomorphism  has  made 
the  educated  mind  very  critical  of  the  traditional  pictures 
of  the  world  to  come. 

Looking  at  the  subject  historically  there  is  no  room 
for  us  to  doubt  that  the  notion  of  immortality  fills  a  large 
place  in  the  structure  of  man's  religious  beliefs.  The  idea 
of  survival  after  death  has  grown  in  significance  with  the 
growth  of  religions,  and  it  ranges  from  a  crude  spiritism  to 
a  refined  spiritualism.  We  cannot  say,  however,  that 
belief  in  immortality  is  universal  in  religion, — there  have 
been  religions  without  it — but  it  has  been  persistent  and 
widespread.  The  religious  and  ethical  value  of  the  belief 
has  varied  greatly.  Some  races  regard  the  fact  of  death 
1  Phcedo,  70  A. 


THE    IDEA    OF   IMMORTALITY  563 

lightly  and  are  deeply  engrossed  with  the  world  around 
them,  while  other  races  are  much  occupied  with  the 
thought  of  a  life  to  come.  Early  culture  hardly  grasped 
the  notion  of  a  '  law  of  mortality/  and  among  the  lowest 
peoples  the  belief  is  common  that  death  is  due  to  sorcery 
or  to  evil  spirits :  to  admit  the  possibility  of  natural  death 
marks  an  advance  in  thinking.  The  idea  that  the  spirits 
of  the  dead  are  still  living  and  active  prevails  far  and  wide 
among  savage  races,  though  they  are  regarded  with  fear 
rather  than  affection.1  The  persistent  belief  in  the  con- 
tinued existence  of  the  dead  in  the  form  of  ghosts  is 
significant,  for  it  points  to  a  deep-rooted  disinclination  to 
suppose  that  death  ends  all.  Yet  the  primitive  belief  had 
no  ethical  meaning,  and  a  man's  ghost  had  no  relation  to 
his  earthly  mode  of  life.  Even  at  a  much  more  advanced 
stage  of  culture,  belief  in  the  survival  of  the  soul  after 
death  may  exercise  little  influence  on  religion  and  conduct. 
It  was  so,  for  example,  with  the  ancient  Greeks.  In  Hades 
the  souls  of  the  dead  had  a  shadowy  and  attenuated  kind 
of  existence,  and  Greek  faith  in  the  individuality  of  the 
soul  after  death  was  faint.  But  a  more  practical  interest 
in  the  destiny  of  the  soul  was  afterwards  inculcated  by 
Orphism  and  the  Mysteries.  And  what  is  true  of  the 
Greeks  is  also  true  of  the  Hebrews.  Only  in  the  latest 
stage  of  Hebrew  religion  did  the  notion  of  resurrection  and 
a  life  hereafter  become  prominent.  To  the  earlier  Hebrews, 
Sheol,  the  abode  of  the  dead,  was  a  dim  and  shadowy  realm 
lying  remote  from  this  world  and  its  interests,  a  ghostly 
region  over  which  even  Jahveh's  rule  did  not  extend.  The 
place  filled  by  the  doctrine  of  a  future  existence  in  the 
religion  of  ancient  Egypt  was  far  larger,  and  the  Egyptian 
thought  long  and  often  on  the  fate  of  the  soul  in  the  land 
beyond  the  grave.  The  ethical  aspect  of  the  belief  in 
immortality  was  here  emphasised :  in  the  world  to  come 

1  In  a  low  type  of  culture,  like  that  of  the  Australian  aborigines,  there 
is  a  firm  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  soul  after  death.  Among  the  natives 
of  Central  Australia  belief  in  the  reincarnation  of  spirits  is  said  to  be 
universal.  Vid.  J.  G.  Frazer,  The  Belief  in  Immortality,  1913,  p.  92. 


564  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY    OF   MAN 

the  soul  was  rewarded  or  punished  for  the  deeds  done  in 
the  body.  In  the  judgment-hall  of  Osiris,  the  god  of  the 
spirit-world,  the  soul  makes  its  appeal  to  its  judge,  and 
shows  cause  why  it  should  be  admitted  to  the  happy  fields 
of  Alu.  "  I  have  not  acted  with  deceit  or  done  evil  to 
men.  I  have  not  oppressed  the  poor.  I  have  not  judged 
unjustly.  I  have  not  known  ought  of  wicked  things.  I 
have  not  committed  sin.  ...  I  am  pure !  I  am  pure ! 
I  am  pure  !  " l 

But  it  is  in  the  Christian  religion  that  the  spiritual 
and  ethical  implications  of  the  belief  in  immortality  are 
most  fully  developed.  The  conception  is  set  before  us  of 
an  immortal  life  inwardly  related  to  this  life,  developing 
out  of  it  but  ultimately  transcending  it.  In  the  Fourth 
Gospel  the  idea  of  an  eternal  life  already  present  in  this 
life  is  prominent.  St.  Paul  unfolds  the  doctrine  of  a 
spiritual  or  transfigured  body:  he  thinks  death  is  the 
condition  of  a  spiritual  transformation  of  the  natural  man, 
so  that  he  becomes  capable  of  a  supramundane  and  glorified 
life.  The  dogma  of  a  resurrection  of  the  flesh,  which  has 
found  its  way  into  the  ecclesiastical  creeds,  is  plainly 
inconsistent  with  the  Pauline  teaching. 

On  the  whole,  then,  it  is  evident  that  a  belief  in 
immortality  in  some  form  has  played  an  important  part  in 
the  history  of  religion,  and  especially  in  the  higher  religions. 
The  movement  of  the  religious  mind  which  issues  in  the 
thought  of  a  transcendent  Good  is  naturally  linked  with 
a  faith  that  the  personal  spirit  has  a  destiny  beyond  the 
seen  and  temporal  order  of  things.  But  of  course  this 
faith  would  be  discredited,  if  it  could  be  shown  to  involve 
assumptions  incompatible  with  the  nature  of  man,  and  of 
the  world  in  which  he  is  placed.  In  the  circumstances  of 
the  case,  science  can  hardly  be  expected  to  yield  any  posi- 
tive evidence  for  immortality.2  But  it  may  be  pertinently 

1  Sayce,  The  Religions  of  Ancient  Egypt  and  Babylonia,  1902,  pp. 
175-176. 

1  In  recent  times  a  few  competent  investigators  have  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  Psychical  Research  supplies  some  evidence  of  personal  survival 


THE   IDEA   OF   IMMORTALITY  565 

asked  whether  scientific  knowledge  furnishes  any  positive 
reasons  against  it.  Certainly,  if  it  could  be  shown  that 
personal  consciousness  is  bound  up  with  the  present  bodily 
organism,  the  hope  of  a  survival  after  death  would  be 
excluded.  Those  who  argue  for  the  complete  dependence 
of  mind  on  body  point  out  how  psychical  process  is  always 
associated  with  neural  process ;  and  on  the  advent  of  death 
as  a  physiological  fact  all  signs  of  psychical  activity  cease. 
Nevertheless  it  is  utterly  wrong  to  conclude,  as  some  do, 
that  the  relation  of  mind  to  body  is  one  of  causal  depen- 
dence. It  is  one  thing  to  hold  there  is  a  functional  relation 
between  mental  and  cerebral  process,  'function*  being 
here  used  in  the  mathematical  sense  of  correspondence :  it 
is  another  and  a  totally  different  thing  to  declare  thought 
is  a  function  of  the  brain,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  generated 
by  cerebral  activity.  Keeping  the  word  function  to  its 
proper  use  in  this  connexion,  we  might  as  truly  say  the 
brain  is  a  function  of  the  mind  as  the  mind  of  the  brain. 
"  The  inference  is  never  from  what  the  brain  can  do  to  what 
the  mind  can  be  and  do,  but  always,  first,  the  opposite."1 
Dependence  of  mind  on  brain,  in  the  materialistic  sense,  is, 
to  put  it  briefly,  impossible.  This  being  so,  the  claim  of 
the  soul  or  self  to  exist  apart  from  the  body  cannot  be 
ruled  out  of  count  as  inconceivable. 

It  may,  however,  be  objected  that  memory  has  its  basis 
in  neural  traces,  and  so  cannot  survive  the  dissolution  of 
the  body.  Certainly  we  are  not  entitled  to  say  memory  is 
purely  an  affair  of  the  mind,  for  many  mental  habits 
appear  to  be  rooted  in  the  structure  of  the  nervous  system. 
And  the  failure  of  memory  under  pathological  conditions, 
or  when  in  old  age  degeneration  of  tissue  reaches  the 
association  areas  of  the  cortex,  is  positive  evidence  of  some 

after  death.  But  I  fancy  the  verdict  of  most  critics  will  be  non  liquet. 
The  so-called  phenomena  of  'cross-references'  do  not  prove  more  than  tele- 
pathy. On  this  point  the  reader  who  is  interested  may  consult  with  advan- 
tage Dr.  McDougall's  instructive  chapter  on  "The  Bearing  of  the  Results  of 
'Psychical  Research'  on  the  Psycho-physical  Problem,"  in  his  Body  and 
Mind,  1911. 

1  W.  Mitchell,  Structure  and  Growth  of  the  Mind,  1907,  p.  24. 


566  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY    OF   MAN 

dependence  of  memory  on  cerebral  traces  or  processes. 
The  problem  turns  on  the  character  and  degree  of  this 
dependence.  Now  neural  traces  are  not  the  sole,  nor  even 
the  most  important,  condition  of  remembering ;  for  if  so 
memory  would  depend  directly  on  repetition.  But  this  is 
plainly  not  the  case.1  The  truth  is  that  memory  depends 
far  more  on  the  presence  of  meaning  in  the  things  re- 
membered ;  and  meaning  must  be  referred  for  its  mainten- 
ance in  the  mind  to  psychical,  not  to  cerebral,  dispositions. 
It  is  therefore  possible  that  the  soul,  which  includes  within 
it  the  psychical  dispositions  formed  during  this  life,  may 
carry  with  it  the  means  of  preserving  a  continuity  between 
the  present  order  and  a  higher  order  of  existence.  If  a 
world  of  meanings  can  be  maintained  by  the  soul,  despite 
the  physiological  changes  of  the  body  in  a  lifetime,  it 
is  conceivable  it  might  be  maintained  through  a  more 
radical  transformation.  At  all  events  a  group  of  memories 
might  remain,  sufficient  to  give  the  sense  of  personal 
continuity. 

So  far  as  science  is  concerned,  then,  the  question  is  an 
open  one ;  it  now  remains  to  ask  whether  philosophy  can 
shed  some  further  light  upon  it.  Philosophical  thinkers 
have  sought  to  commend  the  idea  of  immortality  by 
metaphysical  arguments  and  by  ethical  considerations. 

(1)  Of  the  metaphysical  arguments  much  the  same 
may  be  said  that  was  said  of  the  traditional  proofs  for  the 
existence  of  God.  They  are  not  proofs  in  any  strict  sense, 
and  they  proceed  on  assumptions  which  can  easily  be  called 
in  question.  Historically  they  go  back  as  far  as  Plato. 
In  the  Phcedrus,  Plato  urges  that  the  soul,  being  self- 
moved,  so  having  the  principle  of  movement  within  itself, 
is  unbegotten  and  therefore  indestructible.2  In  the  Phcedo 
it  is  contended  that  the  soul  is  a  constitutive  and  directive 
principle,  not  a  mere  harmony  derived  from  the  body  and 

1  For  instance  it  is  vastly  easier  to  remember  a  rational  sentence  after  a 
single  hearing  than  the  same  number  of  nonsense-words  repeated  several 
times.  Cp.  W.  McDougall,  op.  ctt.  pp.  330-343. 

3  P.  245  0. 


THE   IDEA   OF   IMMORTALITY  567 

perishing  with  it.1  And  the  general  drift  of  the  dialogue 
is  to  show  that  the  soul,  in  its  essential  idea,  partakes  of 
life,  and  thus  cannot  perish.  But  Plato  looks  at  the 
subject  from  various  points  of  view,  and  seeks  to  illuminate 
and  suggest  rather  than  to  prove  in  the  proper  meaning  of 
the  word.  Attempts  of  a  more  formal  kind  to  demonstrate 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  were  made  by  the  Scholastic 
and  the  Cartesian  thinkers.  The  soul,  it  was  argued,  is 
a  substance,  simple,  immaterial,  and  indestructible,  and 
therefore  to  be  thought  as  existing  after  death.  Kant,  in 
his  "  paralogisms  of  pure  reason,"  criticises  severely  this  ap- 
plication of  the  abstract  category  of  substance  to  the  self, 
and  points  out  that  the  fact  that  the  soul  can  be  separated 
in  idea  from  the  body  by  no  means  proves  that  it  is  really 
separable.  Whatever  we  may  think  of  Kant's  own  con- 
ception of  the  self,  his  objections  to  the  doctrine  he  is 
examining  are  valid.  The  idea  of  an  immaterial  sub- 
stratum of  psychical  qualities  is  a  product  of  abstraction, 
and  in  asserting  the  indestructibility  of  this  substance  you 
obviously  assume  immortality.2  Modern  metaphysicians  who 
have  argued  for  immortality  have  usually  done  so  on  the 
ground  that  there  is  something  absolute  and  eternal  in  the 
very  nature  of  the  self.  For  instance,  we  are  told  that  the 
being  of  the  self  is  ultimate ;  or  that  it  is  a  fundamental 
differentiation  of  the  Absolute,  and  therefore  cannot  pass 
away.  The  strength  of  this  contention  is  no  greater  than 
that  of  the  doubtful  metaphysics  on  which  it  is  based. 
And  if  the  argument  were  sound  it  would  follow  that 
every  self  must  have  eternally  pre-existed,  for  a  being 
which  originated  in  time  cannot  be  intrinsically  eternal. 
Some,  no  doubt,  are  ready  to  endorse  the  theory  of  pre- 
existence ;  but  there  is  no  independent  evidence  for  it,  and 
at  the  best  it  remains  improbable.  Our  general  conclusion 
is,  that  the  metaphysical  arguments  which  have  been 
brought  forward  yield  no  positive  evidence  of  value  in 

1  Pp.  94,  95. 

2  The  conception  of  the  self  as  an  active  spiritual  substance,  unifying  its 
states,  is,  of  course,  something  quite  different. 


568  PROGRESS   AND    DESTINY    OF   MAN 

favour  of  immortality.  Where  they  do  not  assume  what  is  to 
be  proved,  they  rest  on  questionable  metaphysical  theories.1 
(2)  The  strength  of  the  case  for  immortality,  as  most 
people  will  admit,  lies  in  the  ethical  argument.  This  line 
of  thought  was  at  least  foreshadowed  by  Plato  in  a  well- 
known  passage  in  the  Republic,  Bk.  x.  He  there  contends 
that  nothing  can  be  destroyed  except  by  its  own  inherent 
badness,  and  since  vice  cannot  destroy  the  soul,  there  is  no 
other  power  which  can  do  so.  Or,  as  we  might  put  it  in 
terms  of  modern  thought,  there  is  an  intrinsic  spiritual 
value  in  the  soul  which  guarantees  its  immortal  life.  A 
similar  idea  of  the  value  of  the  personal  spirit  is  implied 
in  the  somewhat  inconsistent  argument  which  Kant  put 
forward  for  its  immortality.  The  soul,  he  says,  is  capable 
of  the  supreme  good  or  perfected  virtue.  But  the  ethical 
demand  that  the  ideal  be  realised  in  man,  who  is  a  sensuous 
as  well  as  a  rational  being,  postulates  an  infinite  progress 
in  time.  Only  thus  can  sensuous  desire  be  transformed  by 
reason.  This  infinite  progress  means  immortality.2  There 
is  at  least  this  core  of  truth  in  Kant's  contention :  we  feel 
it  to  be  inconsistent  that  the  soul  which  is  steadily  striving 
towards  the  ideal,  and  growing  into  conformity  with  it, 
should  be  annihilated  in  the  midst  of  its  progress  and  the 
elements  of  value  in  it  lost.  A  universe  in  which  the 
Good  makes  such  claims  on  personal  spirits  should  in 
justice  afford  full  scope  for  their  fulfilment ;  and  in  the 
earthly  lot  this  scope  seems  to  be  lacking.  The  thought 
of  a  further  progress  of  the  soul  in  a  higher  form  of  being 
gives  greater  harmony  and  coherency  to  the  ethical  outlook 
on  life.  But,  granting  this,  can  we  say  that  immortality 
is  an  ethical  postulate  without  which  man's  moral  experi- 
\  ence  becomes  unintelligible  ?  If  some  are  bold  to  say  so, 
\  others  frankly  and  firmly  deny  it.  "  If  our  religion  and 

1  Lotze  thinks  the  problem  of  immortality  does  not  belong  to  meta- 
physics. This,  of  course,  depends  on  our  conception  of  metaphysics. 

a  Kant  was  here  guilty  of  a  twofold  inconsistency.  (1)  Mere  duration  is 
not  the  essence  of  immortality.  (2)  On  his  own  showing,  time  is  a  form  for 
the  phenomenal  world,  and  does  not  apply  to  the  real  world  at  all. 


THE   IDEA    OF    IMMORTALITY  569 

our  morality  will  not  work  without  it  (the  postulate  of  im- 
mortality)— so  much  the  worse,  I  reply,  for  our  morality  and 
our  religion." 1  The  opinion  thus  trenchantly  expressed  is 
no  doubt  held  by  a  number  of  thinkers.  On  the  whole  I 
do  not  think  we  can  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  immortality  is 
a  postulate  without  which  morality  becomes  unmeaning. 
But  it  is  a  supposition  which  gives  greater  consistency  and 
deeper  significance  to  the  facts  of  moral  and  religious 
experience.  That  ideal  and  upward  striving  element, 
which  is  interwoven  with  the  texture  of  man's  moral  and 
spiritual  life,  is  far  more  intelligible  if  the  final  destiny  of 
the  soul  is  not  in  this  world  but  beyond  it. 

The  late  Professor  William  James  remarks,  in  his 
Ingersoll  Lecture  on  Immortality,  that  "  belief  in  immor- 
tality is  very  much  a  matter  of  feeling."  No  one  who  has 
studied  the  subject  will  care  to  deny  that  the  feelings  play 
a  large  part  in  this  matter.  Warmth  of  feeling  makes  the 
belief  a  living  one,  and  the  lack  of  feeling  induces  scepti- 
cism or  indifference.  Now  undoubtedly  there  is  a  large 
body  of  feeling,  revealed  in  the  experience  of  the  race  and 
expressing  itself  in  desires  and  aspirations,  which  favours 
the  idea  of  immortality.  Insistent  is  the  appeal  of  human 
affections,  and  they  lend  strength  to  the  faith  that  tender 
ties,  rudely  severed  by  death,  will  somehow  be  renewed  '  in 
a  better  world/  Few  or  none  can  be  indifferent  to  this 
form  of  appeal,  though  it  is  true  enough  that  the  doom  of 
mortals  is  to  desire  many  things  which  are  impossible  or 
impracticable.  One  cannot  therefore  found  a  valid  argu- 
ment on  these  desires;  but  their  persistence  throughout 
the  long  history  of  the  race  encourages  us  to  think  that 
they  are  more  than  foolish  and  futile  longings.  If  man  is 
by  nature  incapable  of  transcending  this  earth-born  form 
of  existence,  why  this  recurring  hope  of  a  destiny  beyond 
the  world  ?  The  movement  of  the  soul  towards  a  Good 
which  this  world  can  neither  give  nor  take  away;  the 
increasing  consciousness  of  the  spirit  that  this  '  bourne  of 
time  and  place '  affords  no  full  scope  for  its  development ; 

1  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality ,  1st  ed.,  p.  507. 


570  PROGRESS   AND    DESTINY   OF   MAN 

all  this  is  suggestive  of  a  goal  beyond  the  seen  and  temporal 
world.  The  religious  man  at  least  finds  it  very  hard  to 
believe  that  such  desires  should  emerge  within  a  divinely 
ordered  universe,  if  all  fulfilment  is  denied.1 

None  the  less  it  is  fair  to  tell  us  we  ought  to  examine 
our  desire  for  immortality,  in  order  to  make  clear  to 
ourselves  what  we  really  want,  and  whether  we  are 
consistent  in  wanting  it.  For  when  we  try  to  represent 
to  ourselves  the  kind  of  immortal  life  we  desire,  we 
become  conscious  of  the  difficulties  that  ensue.  The 
desire  for  the  mere  continuance  of  present  relationships 
hereafter  may  be  inconsistent.  The  mother  who  craves 
immortality  for  her  infant  can  hardly  desire  it  should 
continue  to  all  eternity  an  infant !  And  the  youth  cannot 
really  wish  that  the  aged  parent  should  be  condemned 
to  an  unending  life  of  senility !  Swift's  cynical  picture 
of  the  Struldbrugs  may  remind  us  that  an  immortality 
of  senile  impotence  would  be  more  terrible  than  annihila- 
tion. It  becomes  plain  on  reflexion  that  the  value  of 
an  immortal  life  lies  in  its  quality  and  fulness,  in  its 
superiority  to  the  divisions  and  distractions  of  time,  not 
in  mere  endless  endurance.  And  such  a  life  implies 
a  transformation  of  the  earthly  life  and  its  conditions. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  change  cannot  be  so  great  that 
all  continuity  between  the  mundane  and  supramundane 
existence  is  dissolved,  for  immortality  would  then  lose 
its  personal  and  ethical  significance.  A  metempsychosis, 
such  as  Brahmanism  teaches,  is  devoid  of  ethical  value. 

The  essential  point  is  the  degree  of  transformation 
which  is  involved  in  the  transition  from  a  mundane  to 
a  supramundane  form  of  being.  If  immortality  is  to  be 

1  The  spiritual  significance  of  this  human  hope  is  indicated  in  the 
following  lines  from  Browning's  La  Saisiaz  : 

"Whereas,  life  and  laws  apparent,  reinstated, — all  we  know, 
All  we  know  not, — o'er  the  heaven  again  cloud  closes,  until,  lo — 
Hope    the    arrowy,    just    as    constant,   comes  to    pierce  its    gloom, 

compelled 

By  a  power  and  by  a  purpose  which,  if  no  one  else  beheld, 
I  behold  in  life,  so— hope  !  " 


THE   IDEA   OF   IMMORTALITY  571 

personal  and  ethical,  this  transformation  cannot  be  so 
great  that  it  breaks  down  all  memory  of  the  past  and 
cuts  the  thread  of  individual  continuity.  A  supra- 
mundane  life  which  had  no  conscious  connexion  with 
man's  earthly  existence  could  not  shed  light  on  the 
spiritual  problems  of  experience  nor  fulfil  man's  spiritual 
aspirations.  Pantheistic  and  idealistic  thinkers  who  insist 
on  the  limitations  of  personality,  suggest  that  death  marks 
the  expansion  of  the  self  into  the  impersonal.  The  soul, 
we  are  told,  is  a  function  of  the  Absolute  mediated  by 
the  body,  and  with  the  dissolution  of  the  body  the  soul 
sinks  back  into  the  Absolute.  Those  who  adopt  this 
theory  sometimes  speak  of  the  eternity  of  the  mind  or 
spirit — so,  for  instance,  Spinoza;  but  it  is  the  eternity 
of  the  impersonal  element  in  man,  and  an  immortality 
of  this  kind  is  devoid  of  religious  value.  For  it  neither 
completes  nor  fulfils  the  personal  life. 

How,  it  may  be  asked,  can  this  material  body  be 
so  transformed  that  it  becomes  the  medium  or  instrument 
of  a  higher  life,  a  life  to  some  extent  continuous  with 
the  old  life  ?  To  set  forth  a  convincing  theory  is  beyond 
our  power,  but  we  can  indicate  possibilities  on  the  basis 
of  the  monadistic  view  of  the  world  and  life.  We  set 
out  from  the  fact  that  the  unity  of  the  soul  cannot  be 
explained  through  the  bodily  organism :  it  is  not  created 
by  the  interaction  of  the  bodily  elements.  This  psychical 
unity,  present  at  all  stages  of  development  from  pure 
sentiency  to  rational  self-consciousness,  is  the  teleological 
principle  which  makes  development  possible.  Living 
elements  do  hot  'evolve  a  unity,  but  because  they  already 
form  a  unity  they  develop.  Now  the  human  organism 
we  suppose  to  be  a  graduated  order  of  elements,  and 
these  elements  are  monads,  because  each  possesses  a 
degree  of  inner  or  psychical  life ;  while  the  soul  is  the 
supreme  or  dominant  monad  which  gives  unity  to  the 
whole.1  By  its  selective  and  assimilative  activity  it 

1  The  conception  of  the   'dominant  monad,'  it  will   be  remembered, 
is  due  to  Leibniz. 


572    •  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY   OF   MAN 

builds  up  the  body,  in  other  words,  unifies  and  develops 
in  a  specific  teleological  way  the  system  of  monads  we 
call  the  body.  Hence  the  germinal  soul,  by  the  active 
selection  and  disposition  of  subordinate  elements,  con- 
stitutes a  psychical  life  which  grows  from  sentiency  to 
self-consciousness.  So  it  is  conceivable  that  the  soul, 
or  dominant  monad,  persisting  after  the  disintegration  of 
the  present  organism,  might  build  up  a  new  and  higher 
order  of  body,  while  it  maintained  a  certain  continuity 
of  memory  and  interest  with  the  previous  form  of  personal 
existence.  There  is  no  insuperable  objection  to  the  idea 
that  what  the  soul  has  done,  at  one  stage  of  existence, 
it  might  repeat  at  a  higher  stage.  That  it  must  do  this 
is,  of  course,  more  than  we  can  prove:  still,  in  the 
manner  suggested,  we  can  see  that  a  personal  continuity 
of  life,  which  is  not  destroyed  by  death,  is  at  least  possible. 
It  is  relevant  to  our  argument  to  have  shown  that  this 
possibility  exists.  But  we  cannot  turn  a  possibility  into 
positive  evidence ;  and  the  strength  of  the  case  for 
immortality  lies  in  ethical  and  spiritual  considerations. 

Those  who  defend  the  doctrine  of  immortality  have 
to  show  that  it  is  not  inconsistent  with  reason  or 
incompatible  with  the  nature  of  things.  But  the  idea 
itself  remains  the  object  of  faith  rather  than  of  reason. 
And  the  final  ground  of  our  faith  and  hope  must  be 
the  character  of  God  himself,  from  whom  all  spiritual 
life  proceeds.  It  is  surely  a  legitimate  trust,  that  the 
Father  of  Spirits  will  not  destroy  the  aspiring  soul  that 
draws  its  being  from  himself,  but  will  in  the  end  bring 
it  to  its  goal  and  true  fulfilment.  An  ethical  God  must 
be  the  conserver,  not  the  destroyer  of  values.  This  claim 
of  faith  to  immortality  rests  mainly  on  the  intrinsic 
character  of  the  spiritual  life:  it  has  no  direct  bearing 
on  beings  who  have  never  attained  to  a  personal  and 
spiritual  life  at  all.  That  every  creature  formed  in  the 
semblance  of  man,  however  brutish  or  undeveloped,  is 
destined  to  immortality,  is  more  than  we  dare  affirm. 
To  do  so  would  require  a  deeper  knowledge  of  the  divine 


THE   IDEA    OF    IMMORTALITY  573 

economy  than  we  possess.  We  agree  with  Lotze,  "  that 
every  created  thing  will  continue,  if  and  so  long  as  its 
continuance  belongs  to  the  meaning  of  the  world  ;  that 
everything  will  pass  away  which  had  its  authorised  place 
only  in  a  transitory  phase  of  the  world's  course." x 

In  drawing  my  remarks  on  this  subject  to  a  close, 
I  shall  briefly  recall  the  problems  on  which  the  doctrine 
of  immortality  casts  light.  (1)  In  the  first  place,  the  idea 
helps  to  harmonise  man's  ethical  experience.  He  strives 
after  an  ideal  which  can  never  be  fully  realised  in  this 
life :  the  perfect  Good  is  a  transcendent  Good.  In  keep- 
ing with  the  fact  that  man  is  capable  of  conceiving  and 
seeking  a  transcendent  Good,  is  the  thought  that  his  own 
destiny  is  in  a  transcendent  world,  a  world  where  human 
experience  is  harmonised  and  human  aspirations  fulfilled. 
(2)  In  the  second  place,  the  conception  of  personal 
immortality  enables  us  to  form  an  adequate  notion  of  the 
goal  of  social  progress.  This  goal  cannot  be  consistently 
represented  in  terms  of  the  mundane  order.  (3)  Finally, 
the  idea  of  immortality  gives  us  the  only  assurance  which 
is  satisfying,  that  the  spiritual  values  will  be  conserved. 
A  society  whose  members  are  all  mortal  gives  no  such 
guarantee ;  for  the  personal  lives  which  make  values  living 
and  real  would  be  continually  undergoing  annihilation.2 
An  eternal  system  cannot  be  composed  of  transitory 
elements.  This  truth  deserves  to  be  emphasised,  for  it 
is  sometimes  forgotten.  Hoffding,  for  instance,  in  his 
Philosophy  of  Religion,  fails  to  explain  how  faith  in  the 
'conservation  of  value'  is  legitimate,  when  there  is  no 
assurance  that  the  personal  spirits  who  make  value  real 
are  conserved.  Again,  when  another  writer  tells  us,  that 
what  we  really  want  in  craving  for  immortality  is  that  our 
*  main  interests '  should  be  conserved,  we  confess  our 
inability  to  understand  this  if  the  persons  interested  are 
not  conserved.3  After  all,  ideas,  values,  and  interests  do 

1  Metaphysics,  Eng.  tr.,  ii.  p.  182. 

2  Cp.  on  this  point  SiebeGk,JReligionsphilosophie,  pp.  417-418. 

8  Bosanquet,  The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  p.  260  ff. 


574  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY   OF    MAN 

not  exist  for  themselves :  they  are  abstractions  apart  from 
the  personal  spirits  who  sustain  them. 

Faith  in  immortality  is  not  a  secondary  or  an  acci- 
dental feature  in  the  higher  religious  life  of  man.  The 
developed  religious  consciousness  reaches  beyond  the  world 
and  directs  itself  to  a  supramundane  Good.  It  is  there- 
fore intelligible  that  personal  faith  should  claim  a  personal 
destiny  in  that  transcendent  sphere  where  the  Good  comes 
to  its  full  fruition.  There  is  something  contradictory  in 
the  thought  that  the  self,  whose  spiritual  vocation  tran- 
scends the  world,  should  itself  be  involved  in  the  doom  of 
all  earthly  things. 

0. — THE  TEMPORAL  AND  THE  TRANSCENDENT  WORLD. 

The  direction  of  the  religious  consciousness  is  towards 
the  supramundane,  and  its  goal  is  in  the  transcendent 
world.  This  truth  has  been  steadily  accentuated  through- 
out the  present  discussion  of  religion.  But  it  seems 
advisable  at  this  stage  to  add  some  words  of  explanation, 
and  to  bring  out  more  fully  the  significance  of  this  trend 
of  the  religious  spirit. 

The  movement  of  the  mind  towards  a  world  beyond 
remains  undeveloped  in  primitive  religion :  the  spirits 
which  are  the  objects  of  early  worship  have  their  abode 
within  the  visible  world.  Yet  they  are  not  common 
objects  of  sense ;  for  they  lie  behind  the  immediately  given 
environment,  neither  visible  nor  tangible,  and  operating 
mysteriously.  More  remote  are  the  gods  of  national 
religion.  If  they  work  within  the  world,  yet  their  abode 
is  in  a  region  withdrawn  from  the  haunts  of  men,  and  the 
souls  of  the  departed  are  thought  to  dwell  in  a  shadowy 
realm  apart.  With  the  advent  of  personal  and  universal 
religion  the  movement  of  the  spiritual  consciousness 
completes  itself,  and  the  transcendent  nature  of  God  and 
the  supramundane  destiny  of  man  come  clearly  into  view. 
God  is  above  the  world  and  man's  ultimate  goal  is  not  in 
the  world. 


THE  TEMPORAL  AND  THE  TRANSCENDENT   575 

Now  it  may  be  said  the  idea  of  the  transcendent  is 
vague,  and  its  significance  should  be  better  explained. 
The  mere  conception  of  transcendency  would  apply  to 
things  so  far  removed  from  each  other  as  the  Buddhist 
Nirvana  and  the  Christian  Heaven.  We  agree  it  is  not 
enough  simply  to  say  the  transcendent  is  the  negative  of 
the  mundane  order.  It  is  this,  no  doubt,  but  it  must  be 
something  more,  something  positive,  if  it  is  to  have  a 
religious  value.  On  the  other  hand,  one  has  to  bear  in 
mind  that,  if  the  transcendent  world  could  be  fully 
rationalised  and  connected  with  the  given  world,  it  would 
cease  to  be  transcendent :  there  would  merely  be  the  one 
system  within  which  mundane  and  supramundane  appeared 
as  aspects  of  experience.  Hence  in  a  thoroughgoing 
monism  the  transcendent  becomes  immanent.  Conse- 
quently, if  we  are  to  maintain  the  reality  of  the  transcen- 
dent, from  the  theoretical  standpoint  there  will  always  be 
a  negative  element  in  the  idea.  It  denotes  that  which 
lies  beyond  the  connected  whole  of  mundane  experience, 
and  it  cannot  be  construed  in  terms  of  that  experience. 
Accordingly  representations  of  the  supramundane  in  terms 
of  this  world  can  never  claim  perfect  truth :  they  can  only 
be  figurative  and  symbolical.  And  yet  the  transcendent, 
if  it  is  to  have  a  practical  significance  for  human  life, 
cannot  stand  in  a  purely  negative  relation  to  the  world 
of  experience.  This  fact  is  well  brought  out  in  the 
development  of  Kant's  philosophy.  In  the  Kantian 
system  the  negative  relation  of  the  noumenal  to  the 
phenomenal  in  the  realm  of  theory  is  transformed  into  a 
positive  and  constructive  relation  in  the  realm  of  practice. 

The  need  of  this  positive  and  practical  relationship  is 
fully  revealed  in  the  working  of  the  religious  mind.  Eor 
religious  faith  the  higher  world  which  is  its  goal  is  never 
merely  negative,  merely  future,  merely  beyond.  The 
1  power  of  the  world  to  come '  is  experienced  here,  shaping 
and  directing  man's  spiritual  endeavour.  The  transcendent 
realm  is  so  thought  in  relation  to  temporal  experience, 
that  the  soul  finds  there  the  fulfilment  and  completion  of 


576  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY    OF    MAN 

its  spiritual  life.  Though  rational  reflexion  cannot 
demonstrate  the  continuity  of  the  two  spheres,  faith 
postulates  between  them  a  continuity  of  value.  The 
spiritual  Good,  discerned  under  conditions  of  sense  and 
time,  when  its  full  meaning  is  realised  becomes  a  transcen- 
dent Good,  and  the  spiritual  values  we  achieve  here  are 
maintained  and  come  to  their  fruition  hereafter.  From 
one  point  of  view  it  is  not  untrue  to  say  that  "  the  things 
not  seen "  are  "  a  value  superadded  to  the  phenomenal 
world";  but  it  has  to  be  kept  in  mind  that  this  value 
can  never  be  fully  realised  in  the  phenomenal  world,  and 
so  points  beyond  it.  Hence  there  is  no  discontinuity 
between  the  temporal  and  the  transcendent  Good ;  the 
two  are  related  as  the  partial  to  the  perfect,  as  the 
fragmentary  to  the  complete ;  and  here  and  now  the  soul 
has  the  foretaste  of  the  final  fulness.  Not  then  by  reason, 
but  by  a  postulate  of  faith  is  the  negative  aspect  of  the 
transcendent  transformed  into  a  positive  and  practical 
relation;  and  this  postulate  expresses  the  demand  of 
personal  spirits  that  the  values  of  the  spiritual  life  shall 
come  to  their  completion  and  fulfilment.  This  faith  is 
non -rational  if  you  please ;  but  it  is  not  irrational,  for  its 
postulates  do  not  contradict  the  knowledge  we  possess. 
An  act  of  faith,  just  because  it  is  faith,  cannot  be  fully 
rationalised :  it  is  a  free  act  of  the  spirit  made  vital  by 
the  spiritual  experience  out  of  which  it  issues. 

On  the  grounds  stated,  the  religious  thinker  cannot  be 
expected  to  give  a  rational  deduction  of  the  transcendent 
world.  But  he  may  be  asked  to  show  why  its  existence 
is  not  incompatible  with  that  order  of  experience  with 
which  we  are  familiar.  And  it  would  be  a  step  in  this 
direction,  if  he  were  able  to  make  it  plain  that  the  present 
order  of  experience  involves  conditions  which  are  not 
absolute,  and  therefore  may  conceivably  be  transcended. 
If  we  can  do  this,  we  shall  do  something  to  confirm  the 
religious  postulate. 

The  salient  fact  about  the  mundane  order  of  experience 
is,  that  it  is  an  order  which  is  realised  under  spatial  and 


1 

THE  TEMPORAL  AND  THE  TRANSCENDENT  "57.7  ' 

temporal  conditions.  And  space  and  time,  in  the  form  "  , 
of  those  all-inclusive  wholes  which  conceptual  thinking  * 
yields,  cannot  be  taken  for  absolutely  real.  Were  they 
so,  we  should  be  compelled  to  accept  the  reality  of  the 
infinitely  extended  and  the  infinitely  little.  But  if  space 
and  time  are  not  absolutely  real,  neither  can  it  be  said 
that  they  are  subjective  creations.  JSTor  are  they  a  priori 
forms  of  intuition,  as  Kant  supposed.  If  the  theory 
previously  developed  in  these  pages  be  right,  the  real 
basis  on  which  the  space-idea  has  been  elaborated  would 
be  the  co-existence  of  centres  of  experience  within  the 
common  medium  through  which  they  interact.  The  time-  • 
idea,  again,  is  evolved  on  the  basis  of  the  changing  states 
of  psychical  experients.  Both  ideas,  as  they  come  to 
be  developed  by  perceptual  and  conceptual  processes,  denote 
man's  way  of  construing  that  order  which  lies  behind  the 
evolution  of  experience.  There  is  this  element  of  truth 
in  the  view  of  those  who  regard  space  and  time  as  sub- 
jective :  they  depend  for  their  present  character  on  the 
particular  way  in  which  apprehending  minds  have  learned 
to  construe  the  data  of  experience.  That  this  is  not  the 
only  possible  way,  there  are  grounds  for  believing.  Thus 
the  mathematician  can  prove  it  is  possible  to  develop 
with  logical  consistency  the  conception  of  a  space  different 
from  the  tri-dimensional  space  to  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed, although  we  cannot  translate  it  into  terms  of  sense- 
perception.  Again,  in  the  case  of  time,  our  outlook  upon 
it  depends  on  what  has  been  called  our  '  time-span/  With 
man  this  is  a  matter  of  days  and  months  and  years:  if 
the  insect  whose  life  is  measured  by  a  day  had  any 
conscious  idea  of  time,  its  span  would  be  vastly  less : 
and  to  a  being  of  a  far  higher  order  than  man  a  thousand 
years  might  be  '  as  one  day/  Despite  such  wide  differences 
of  practical  attitude  to  time,  there  is  nothing  illusory  in 
its  nature ;  for  it  is  lene  fundatum,  resting  on  the  primary 
fact  of  change  and  its  psychological  counterpart,  the 
experience  of  duration.  But  time,  as  we  know  and  use 
the  developed  form,  stands  for  the  measure  of  our 


578  PROGRESS    AND    DESTINY   OF   MAN 

practical  activities ;  and  this  is  what  it  means  for  us. 
The  time-direction  is  determined  for  us  by  the  teleological 
order  in  which  we  organise  these  activities.  So  the  means 
precedes  in  time  the  end,  and  the  end  comes  after  the 
means  and  fulfils  it.  Conceptual  time,  which  is  a  definite 
order  running  from  the  past  through  the  present  into  the 
future,  depends  on  the  teleological  or  purposive  organisation 
of  practical  life.  To  a  being  having  only  the  psychical 
experience  of  duration,  destitute  of  those  '  forward-looking 
thoughts'  which  are  the  mark  of  self-conscious  agents, 
the  notion  of  time  as  an  all-comprehensive  order  would  be 
meaningless.  Time  is  a  legitimate  interpretation  of  experi- 
ence ;  but  the  meaning  it  has  for  us  is  bound  up  with 
the  scope  of  our  powers  and  our  outlook,  and  its  form  is 
determined  by  the  teleological  organisation  of  our  lives. 

It  is  admissible  to  suppose,  therefore,  that,  when  the 
basis  of  personal  life  is  transformed,  and  the  soul  passes 
into  a  higher  stage  of  being,  the  existing  time-divisions 
no  longer  count.  Similarly  the  present  divisions  of  space 
would  lose  their  meaning.  Such  a  form  of  existence  may 
be  fitly  termed  suprainundane  and  supra  temporal,  because 
it  transcends  the  earthly  order  in  space  and  time.  From 
the  fact  that  it  is  transcendent  we  have  no  experience  to 
guide  us  in  framing  a  representation  of  this  higher  phase 
of  existence :  it  must  remain  an  object  of  faith,  not  of 
sight.  This  kind  of  inability  is  only  what  is  to  be  expected, 
and  there  are  analogies  within  the  field  of  human  ex- 
perience. For  instance,  how  little  were  men  on  the 
lowest  levels  of  culture  able  to  anticipate  the  form  and 
content  of  civilised  life  !  Again,  how  feebly  can  the  child 
of  tender  years  forecast  the  ideas  and  outlook  of  the 
mature  mind !  In  these  and  other  cases  experience  is  the 
only  sufficient  instructor.  And  so  nothing  but  experience 
can  solve  the  problem  of  the  nature  of  the  transcendent 
life ;  at  the  lower  stage  no  more  than  a  dim  presentiment 
of  the  higher  is  possible.  But  where  the  logical  under- 
standing can  draw  no  cogent  inferences,  there  is  room  for 
the  spiritual  venture  of  faith.  This  reference  of  religion 


THE  TEMPORAL  AND  THE  TRANSCENDENT   579 

to  a  supramundane  sphere  supplies  a  test  of  spiritual 
character:  this  test  would  not  exist  if  religion  were  no 
more  than  a  system  of  reasoned  truths. 

We  can  therefore  say  little  that  is  positive  about  the 
nature  of  the  supramundane  life.  Yet  there  are  certain 
ideas  in  regard  to  it  which  we  may  reject  with  some 
confidence.  We  shall  do  so  on  the  strength  of  the 
postulate  which  demands  a  continuity  between  the  lower 
and  higher  forms  of  existence.  For  it  is  one  personal 
life  at  different  stages  of  development,  though  the  transition 
from  one  stage  to  the  other  means  a  transformation.  If 
this  be  so,  the  supratemporal  life  cannot  mean  an  absolutely 
changeless  life.  Such  a  destiny  would  do  away  with  the 
conditions  of  personal  consciousness,  for  there  could  be 
no  consciousness  apart  from  changing  psychical  states. 
So  the  supramundane  or  eternal  state  of  being  cannot 
signify  a  perfectly  unchanging  existence,  if  it  is  to  be 
self-conscious  and  maintain  a  continuity  of  interest  and 
value  with  the  earthly  existence.  The  transformation 
involved  may  be  far-reaching,  but  it  cannot  be  transforma- 
tion into  an  absolutely  fixed  state,  if  the  personal  meaning 
and  interest  of  the  self  are  not  to  vanish  away.  Complete 
fixity  is  not  compatible  with  life.  In  popular  religion 
the  word  eternity  is  vaguely  used ;  to  many  it  seems  to 
convey  little  more  than  the  thought  of  everlastingness. 
Yet  a  transcendent  existence  must  mean  much  more  than 
mere  extension  in  time.  A  life  in  which  the  aspiring  soul 
comes  to  its  fulfilment  must  possess  something  far  more 
than  quantitative  endurance ;  for  it  is  the  quality,  not  the 
quantity,  of  life  which  counts.  The  idea  of  an  eternal 
or  supratemporal  life  ought  rather  to  convey  the  thought 
of  a  living  fulness  of  personal  experience  in  which  our 
present  time-divisions  have  ceased  to  play  a  part.  Even 
in  our  intenser  experiences  on  earth  the  passing  of  time 
has  little  significance :  dem  G-lucklichen  sclilagt  keine  Stunde. 
In  the  supramundane  order  of  being  the  main  thing  is, 
that  the  fragmentary  and  broken  character  of  our  human 
experience  has  given  place  to  an  experience  which  is  full 


580  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY   OF   MAN 

and  satisfying,  an  experience  which  has  risen  superior  to 
the  lapse  of  time  and  all  its  painful  uncertainties. 

The  temporal  and  the  transcendent  represent  stages 
in  the  soul's  progress.  The  value  realised  at  the  lower 
stage  is  conserved  in  the  higher,  for  the  self  retains  a 
continuity  of  meaning  and  interest  notwithstanding  the 
transformation  it  has  undergone.  The  disintegration  of 
the  material  body,  on  this  view,  is  not  a  liberation  from 
the  limits  of  personality,  but  the  way  to  the  realisation  of 
a  higher  form  of  personal  life.  Pure  changelessness,  we 
have  seen,  cannot  be  predicated  of  this  life,  and  I  think 
we  may  go  a  step  further.  It  is  difficult  to  suppose  that 
any  form  of  life,  which  remains  that  of  a  finite  personal 
being,  is  a  life  which  excludes  all  possibilities  of  further 
development.  If  our  present  desires  are  to  weigh  at  all 
in  this  connexion,  one  would  say  that  the  transformation 
of  all  endeavour  into  complete  satiety  would  be  the 
negation  rather  than  the  realisation  of  our  aspirations. 
"  What  men  really  want,  when  they  want  at  all,  is  to  be 
or  do  more  of  what  they  are  or  are  doing,"  so  it  has  been 
said.1  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  plain  that,  if  there  is  a 
supramundane  development  of  personal  spirits,  it  cannot  be 
a  mere  repetition  and  prolongation  of  human  striving.  For 
the  defects  and  obstacles  which  give  form  and  character 
to  earthly  endeavour  are  linked  to  our  material  organism 
and  its  environment,  and  could  not  persist  when  these 
conditions  were  transformed.  The  thought  of  a  higher 
order  of  development  suggests  itself,  a  development  into 
which  the  old  warfare  with  sin  no  longer  enters  and  the 
spiritual  powers  have  unimpeded  exercise.  Here  there 
would  be  no  bitterness  of  futile  endeavour,  and  the  good 
would  have  uninterrupted  sway.  But  it  is  easy  to 
speculate  on  this  subject,  though  hard  to  speculate  to 
profit.  Confronted  with  this  problem  a  religious  genius 
like  St.  Paul  was  constrained  to  emphasise  the  fact  that 
'  we  know  in  part.'  In  similar  circumstances  Plato  was 
wont  to  pass  from  lucid  argument  to  myth  or  parable, 

1  R.  L.  Nettleship's  Philosophical  Remains,  p.  9. 


REVELATION   AND    RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT      581 

with  a  half  ironical  reference  to  the  obscurity  of  the 
subject  and  the  limitations  of  human  powers.  And 
after  all,  if  we  saw  further  and  could  prove  more,  faith 
would  mean  less. 


D. — EEVELATION  AND  MAN'S  RELIGIOUS  DEVELOPMENT. 

On  the  question  of  the  relation  of  God  to  man's 
religious  development  we  have  hitherto  said  little.  But 
the  matter  is  too  important  to  be  passed  lightly  over  ; 
and  though  the  subject  is  perhaps  not  necessarily  included 
in  the  present  chapter,  it  has  a  relation  to  it  and  may 
appropriately  enough  form  its  close. 

From  the  general  phenomena  of  religious  development 
some  broad  conclusions  have  been  drawn.  That  develop- 
ment is  broken  in  its  course  and  partial  in  its  movement, 
yet  to  the  eye  that  surveys  the  whole,  a  general  progress 
is  visible.  Spiritual  and  universal  religion,  as  we  find  it 
in  Christianity,  is  an  immeasurable  advance  on  the  crude 
spiritism  of  the  lowest  culture.  Eeligion  shares  in  the 
general  movement  of  progress,  and  influences  and  is 
influenced  by  the  other  elements  of  social  life.  More 
especially  the  growth  of  the  ethical  consciousness,  which 
is  the  fruit  of  social  advance,  has  powerfully  contributed 
to  the  elevation  and  refinement  of  religion.  The  increas- 
ing energy  of  thought  which  comes  of  developing  civilisa- 
tion has  reacted  on  religion,  deepening  its  meaning  by 
deepening  man's  knowledge  of  the  universe  and  of  himself ; 
and  even  where  old  doctrines  remain  they  are  seen  in  a 
larger  setting.  In  the  spiritual  as  in  the  natural  world 
there  is  nowhere  perfect  fixity.  Religion,  like  a  stream, 
has  sometimes  periods  of  swift  advance;  at  other  times 
it  seems  to  become  stagnant ;  and  there  are  even  points 
where  it  appears  to  bend  backward  on  its  course.  Still 
when  we  trace  the  river  over  a  wide  space,  we  realise 
that  at  the  end  of  the  journey  we  have  left  the  starting- 
point  far  behind.  On  the  whole  we  can  discern  in  the 
history  of  religion  the  gradual  liberation  of  the  human 


582  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY   OF   MAN 

mind  from  the  bondage  of  materialism  and  an  advance  in 
spiritual  ideas:  in  short,  religious  development  reveals  to 
us  religion  becoming  increasingly  inward  and  spiritual. 
The  growth  of  the  religious  consciousness  of  humanity  is 
a  process  of  momentous  significance:  it  means  man's 
progress  in  the  knowledge  of  himself,  of  the  world,  and 
of  God.  But  this  process,  like  other  phases  of  spiritual 
development,  cannot  be  adequately  described  in  terms  of 
organic  growth ;  and  there  is  a  danger  of  introducing  a 
false  rigidity  into  our  generalisations.  The  growth  of  an 
organism  is  uniform  through  all  its  parts:  it  moves 
altogether  if  it  moves  at  all.  But  when  we  deal  with 
spiritual  development  in  society  or  the  race,  we  are 
dealing  with  a  movement  which  advances  at  very  unequal 
rates  within  the  complex  social  whole.  If  we  were  to 
use  an  image  to  illustrate  our  meaning,  it  would  be  that 
of  a  body  of  troops  where  those  in  the  van  are  pushing 
rapidly  forward,  the  centre  is  only  moving  slowly  in  the 
same  direction,  while  the  rear  is  lagging  far  behind  or 
may  have  come  to  a  standstill.  Keligious  progress  never 
affects  all  classes  in  a  society  equally,  and  ignorant  super- 
stition will  be  found  alongside  enlightened  faith.  It  is  not 
needful  to  amplify  this  statement,  for  the  subject  has  been 
discussed  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  volume ;  but  the  reader 
ought  to  keep  the  facts  in  mind  when  we  are  considering 
the  relation  of  revelation  to  man's  religious  development. 

Revelation  we  take  to  mean  an  apprehension  of  truth 
which  rests,  directly  or  indirectly,  on  the  activity  of  God. 
All  centres  of  experience  constantly  depend  on  the 
divine  Ground  of  the  world,  and  are  sustained  by  the 
divine  Will.  But  only  by  personal  spirits  can  the  divine 
working  and  leading  be  consciously  apprehended.  Hence 
the  idea  of  revelation  has  a  broader  and  a  narrower 
meaning,  as  we  see  in  the  use  of  the  phrases  'general 
revelation '  and  '  special  revelation.'  In  the  widest  sense 
of  the  word  the  order  of  nature  is  a  revelation,  for  it 
unfolds  a  meaning  which  has  its  ultimate  source  in  God. 
In  a  higher,  though  still  in  a  broad  interpretation  of  the 


REVELATION   AND    RELIGIOUS    DEVELOPMENT      583 

word,  the  development  of  a  moral  order  in  human  experi- 
ence and  the  manifold  expressions  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness in  history  are  revelations,  for  they  rest  on  the 
living  relation  of  the  human  mind  to  God,  and  apart  from 
that  relation  they  would  not  exist.  In  other  words,  the 
whole  body  of  moral  and  religious  phenomena  is  significant 
of  a  divine  purpose  which  is  being  realised  in  humanity, 
and  through  these  experiences  man  is  fulfilling  his  divinely 
appointed  destiny.  In  this  acceptation  of  the  word  the 
lowest  as  well  as  the  highest  religion  would  fall  within 
the  scope  of  the  principle  of  revelation,  for  every  religion, 
whatever  its  content,  would  have  a  place  and  meaning  in 
the  divine  world-plan.  '  No  form  of  religion  is  wholly 
devoid  of  spiritual  significance.  Even  the  rude  worship 
of  the  fetish  or  the  totem  is  not  a  meaningless  aberration 
of  the  human  mind  left  to  its  own  devices.  In  these 
lowly  forms  men  were  unconsciously  expressing  an 
impulse  latent  within  them  which  had  its  final  source  in 
a  Power  above  themselves. 

The  question,  however,  has  still  to  be  put,  whether, 
within  the  development  of  religion,  it  is  not  possible  to 
trace  a  more  direct  working  of  the  divine  Spirit  leading 
to  the  apprehension  of  spiritual  truth.  To  express  it 
otherwise :  Can  the  claim  to  specific  or  special  revelation, 
over  and  above  the  general  revelation  of  which  we  have 
been  speaking,  be  maintained  ?  In  a  pantheistic  system 
this  question  would  not  arise,  for  the  God  of  pantheism 
is  a  purely  immanent  Power,  everywhere  present  and 
ever  active,  yet  at  no  point  definitely  intervening  and 
influencing  the  course  of  evolution.  To  put  it  bluntly, 
God  on  this  theory  is  always  doing  all  he  can.  The  case 
is  different  with  the  transcendent,  yet  also  immanent,  God 
of  theistic  religion.  Here  at  least  the  way  is  open  for  us 
to  infer  a  specific  revealing  activity  of  God  within  the 
development  of  religious  experience,  if  the  facts  seem  to 
call  for  it.  But  a  difficulty  presents  itself.  How  are  we 
to  distinguish  an  act  of  special  revelation  on  God's  part 
from  that  general  revelation  which  is  contained  in  the 


584  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY    OF   MAN 

development  of  spiritual  experience  ?  Plainly  something 
more  than  the  individual  claim  to  be  inspired  is  necessary ; 
otherwise  the  '  frenzy '  of  the  savage  sorcerer  might  rank 
for  a  revelation  with  the  '  message '  of  the  prophet  of 
righteousness.  A  special  revelation,  it  may  be  said,  will 
possess  an  authoritative  character.  But  we  must  have 
some  test  of  what  is  authoritative  if  the  problem  is  to  be 
brought  any  nearer  to  a  solution.  Needless  to  say,  on 
this  subject  there  has  been  a  vast  amount  of  strife  and 
division,  and  the  modern  mind  is  becoming  less  and  less 
inclined  to  accept  a  doctrine  as  '  revealed '  because  it  is 
taught  by  a  church  or  contained  in  a  sacred  book.  Some 
further  explanation  is  demanded. 

In  the  notion  of  '  revealed  '  as  opposed  to  '  natural ' 
knowledge  there  is  usually  conveyed  the  thought  of  a 
communication  of  truth  to  which  man  could  not  attain 
by  his  own  unaided  powers.  That  is  to  say,  a  knowledge 
is  communicated  by  God  to  man  which  man  otherwise 
could  not  have  possessed.  The  older  theological  concep- 
tion was,  that  religious  doctrines  were  imparted  in  this 
supernatural  fashion.  In  this  form,  however,  the  idea  is 
no  longer  tenable,  and  it  was  the  offspring  of  an  age  when 
the  psychological  nature  and  the  historical  development 
of  religion  were  little  understood.  Religious  doctrines  as 
such  are  not  imparted  to  the  mind  from  without :  they 
bear  on  their  face  the  evidence  of  human  thought  working 
on  the  matter  of  religious  experience,  and  influenced  by 
various  motives,  notably  by  motives  springing  from  the 
social  and  intellectual  environment.  What  is  primary  is 
the  spiritual  experience  out  of  which  the  doctrines  arise 
and  which  they  claim  to  interpret.  Direct  revelation  can 
only  be  asserted  of  a  religious  experience :  the  doctrine  is 
a  derivative,  and  sometimes  an  imperfect,  statement  of 
what  the  experience  means.  In  offering  some  further 
remarks  on  this  subject  of  '  special  revelation/  I  wish  to 
suggest  rather  than  to  dogmatise. 

Special  revelation  must  first  and  foremost  be  a  per- 
sonal and  inward  spiritual  experience.  A  sacred  writing 


REVELATION   AND    RELIGIOUS   DEVELOPMENT      585 

or  a  religious  institution  can  only  be  '  revealed '  in  the 
secondary  sense,  that  it  has  arisen  out  of  inspired  experi- 
ences of  human  souls.  It  will  therefore  be  in  the  domain 
of  spiritual  and  personal  religion,  if  anywhere,  that  these 
revealing  experiences  will  be  most  surely  discerned.  The 
phenomena  of  dream  and  vision,  which  stand  for  specific 
revelation  in  the  earlier  stages  of  religion,  have  not  an 
intrinsic  character  that  would  establish  such  a  claim ; 
and  the  value  we  set  on  them  will  depend  on  their 
developmental  relation  to  the  central  purpose  of  religion 
and  the  higher  religious  experiences.  How  then  are  we 
to  decide  when  these  higher  spiritual  experiences  may 
rightfully  rank  as  special  revelations  ?  The  historic 
student,  be  it  remembered,  stands  in  no  direct  and  im- 
mediate relation  to  these  inner  processes,  and  he  cannot 
reproduce  them  in  himself  and  say  they  mean  for  him 
just  what  they  meant  for  those  who  originally  experienced 
them.  In  the  circumstances  it  does  not  seem  possible 
to  reach  a  decision  which  is  more  than  a  private  feeling, 
unless  you  can  go  beyond  the  particular  experience  and 
test  the  content  of  truth  which  it  claims  in  some  larger  way. 
We  shall  be  helped  in  this  task  if  we  keep  in  view  the 
central  end  or  good  after  which  the  spiritual  consciousness 
strives,  and  towards  which  religious  development  moves. 
That  good  is  a  divine  and  transcendent  Good  through 
which  all  temporal  goods  reach  their  fulfilment  and  con- 
summation. Now  it  is  not  a  feature  of  religious  develop- 
ment to  be  a  constant  and  consistent  movement  to  this 
goal.  For  all  spiritual  development  involves  the  factor 
of  human  freedom,  and  man  oftentimes  fails  io  his 
vocation  and  wilfully  seeks  his  good  where  it  is  not  to 
be  found.  Hence  the  disappointments  and  disillusionments 
which  mark  man's  spiritual  pilgrimage ;  hence  also  the 
spectacle  of  faiths  decaying  which  once  were  quick  and 
growing.  Within  the  general  revelation  contained  in 
religious  experience  there  is  room,  then,  for  the  idea  of 
a  directive  influence  of  God,  working  in  a  special  way  at 
special  times,  an  influence  definitely  exerted  to  keep  the 


586  PROGRESS    AND    DESTINY    OF    MAN 

line  of  man's  spiritual  development  towards  its  tran- 
scendent goal  and  to  quicken  in  souls  the  consciousness 
of  their  spiritual  destiny.  This  special  revelation  differs  in 
degree  rather  than  in  kind  from  the  general  revelation  con- 
tained in  the  moral  order  and  in  religious  experience.  It 
denotes  a  more  intense  and  specifically  purposive  working 
of  God  on  the  human  soul.  Such  higher  revelations  have 
been  variously  experienced  by  different  individuals  in 
different  ages.  The  divine  fire  burned  and  men  spoke 
with  their  tongue  in  the  language  of  their  time.  These 
special  revelations  always  signify  new  and  fruitful  appre- 
hensions of  divine  truth  on  the  part  of  man.  The  inspired 
word  thus  spoken  to  a  people  takes  a  far  wider  significance  ; 
it  becomes  a  guiding  light  in  the  spiritual  development 
of  man.  So  if  man  seeks  God,  God  in  turn  directs  man 
to  the  fulfilment  of  his  spiritual  destiny.  God  guiding 
religious  development  from  within  through  the  revealing 
experiences  of  his  servants, — this  is  special  revelation,  and 
it  is  a  factor  in  the  providential  order  of  the  world. 

From  its  nature  special  revelation  is  not  a  collective 
experience;  it  is  the  experience  of  the  few  who  are 
qualified  to  be  the  media  of  divine  influence.  The  springs 
of  social  progress  lie,  not  in  the  average  multitude,  but  in 
those  outstanding  figures  who  see  further  and  feel  deeper 
than  common  men.  Nor  is  it  different  with  religious 
development.  The  mountain  peak  first  catches  the  light 
of  the  rising  sun  ;  and  so  it  is  the  prophet,  standing  high 
above  the  crowd  of  men,  who  receives  the  revealing  light 
of  God  and  then  reflects  it  to  the  many.  The  prophet  and 
spiritual  leader  become  the  organs  of  higher  revelation, 
communicating  their  own  vision  of  divine  truth  to  the 
society  around  them.  When  the  religious  life  has  grown 
stagnant  and  worship  has  become  mechanical,  when  human 
hearts  led  captive  by  the  desire  of  this  world  have  forgotten 
the  heavenly  goal,  through  these  elect  souls  the  divine 
quickening  comes  and  men  are  braced  for  the  fulfilment 
of  their  divine  vocation.  The  great  crises  and  the  far- 
reaching  new  movements  of  man's  spiritual  development 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS  587 

have  had  their  temporal  origin  in  these  revealing  experi- 
ences. In  this  way  the  religious  life  of  society  has  time 
and  again  been  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  the  world 
and  directed  anew  to  the  transcendent  Good.  So,  despite 
human  failure  and  error,  the  true  ideal  of  the  spirit 
victoriously  asserts  itself.  The  name  special  revelation 
may  fitly  be  applied  to  such  illuminating  experiences  in  the 
soul  of  man,  experiences  which  have  initiated  new  spiritual 
movements,  and  have  given  men  a  deeper  sense  of  what 
religion  means  and  of  the  goal  to  which  it  leads.  Here, 
if  anywhere,  within  the  great  and  complex  movement  of 
religion  a  specific  directing  activity  of  God  is  apparent. 
But  while  religious  philosophy  may  thus  find  a  place  and 
meaning  for  the  idea  of  special  revelation,  it  cannot  be 
expected  to  give  a  detailed  judgment  on  its  historic  claims. 
Some  means  of  testing  these  claims  to  revealed  truth  will 
be  found  in  the  manner  in  which  they  maintain  and 
justify  themselves  in  the  course  of  religious  development. 
What  truly  reveals  God  will  have  a  revealing  value  for 
souls:  if  the  light  is  divine,  it  will  be  the  light  of  life. 
Applying  this  test,  we  may  surely  say  that  the  ethical 
message  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  and  the  words  of  Christ 
in  a  unique  degree,  are  '  special  revelations/ 

It  now  only  remains  to  gather  up  in  a  few  concluding 
remarks  some  reflexions  suggested  by  our  survey  of  the 
nature,  development,  and  truth  of  religion.  No  one  can 
study  the  phenomena  of  religion  without  being  deeply 
impressed  by  their  significance.  In  religion  as  nowhere 
else,  is  to  be  found  the  key  to  the  meaning  of  life. 
Though  the  importance  of  religion  may  often  be  obscured 
for  individuals,  or  even  for  the  men  of  an  age,  it  never 
fails  to  reassert  its  power.  Exclusive  devotion  to  secular 
objects  and  interests  always  ends  in  disappointment  and 
disillusionment,  and  an  era  of  scepticism  closes  with  a 
return  to  faith.  The  persistence  of  religion  through  all 
the  changes  of  human  society  is  a  token  that  it  is  deep- 
rooted  in  the  perennial  needs  of  the  soul. 


588  PROGRESS    AND   DESTINY    OF   MAN 

Man  conies  into  being  within  a  world  divinely  ordered, 
a  world  whose  interacting  elements  are  created  and 
sustained  by  God.  The  intrinsic  relation  of  man's  spirit 
to  God  on  the  one  hand,  and  its  own  incompleteness  on  the 
other,  serve  to  explain  the  genesis  and  growth  of  religion. 
This  incompleteness  has  two  aspects:  men  need  their 
•fellow-men  and  they  need  God  for  their  self-fulfilment : 
so  the  religious  bond  links  them  to  one  another  and  to  a 
Power  above  them.  Hence  religion  is  both  an  organised, 
collective  service  and  an  inward  individual  experience,  and 
these  objective  and  subjective  factors  act  and  react  on  one 
another.  The  objective  order  makes  for  continuity,  and 
the  inward  experience  for  progress.  Religion  evolves  as 
an  aspect  of  the  larger  whole  of  culture,  and  in  its  develop- 
ment it  influences  and  is  influenced  by  other  aspects  of 
culture.  From  the  limitations,  outward  and  inward,  to 
which  man's  nature  is  subject,  there  issues  the  endless 
procession  of  his  needs  and  desires.  These  are  slowly 
purified  and  elevated  with  the  evolution  of  social  life ;  and 
the  growth  of  religion  is  just  man's  deepening  consciousness 
of  the  meaning  and  fulfilment  of  his  religious  need.  The 
broad  trend  of  this  development  is  from  the  sensuous  to 
the  spiritual,  from  outward  to  inward,  from  a  mundane  to 
a  supramundane  goal.  From  the  beginning  the  object 
of  man's  worship  lies  beyond  the  immediate  and  visible 
environment,  and  is  reached  by  an  exercise  of  faith  in 
some  form.  This  movement  of  faith,  impelled  by  the 
deepening  need  of  the  soul,  gradually  rises  beyond  the 
world  of  sense,  till  it  finds  in  a  transcendent  God  the  true 
object  of  human  worship,  and  in  a  transcendent  world  the 
true  destiny  of  man.  In  this  process  faith  makes  full  use 
of  imaginative  thinking  and  draws  freely  on  human 
analogies ;  and  this  renders  necessary  a  philosophical 
criticism  of  the  forms  of  religious  representation.  But  so- 
called  anthropomorphism  can  never  be  entirely  eliminated, 
and  is  so  far  justified  by  the  spiritual  affinity  of  man  and 
God.  With  the  growth  of  religious  thought  the  grosser 
images  of  sense,  through  which  man  has  striven  to  depict 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS  589 

the  things  of  the  spirit,  are  gradually  cleared  away,  and 
the  misleading  figure  is  transformed  into  the  symbol.  In 
this  way  the  mode  of  representation  may  grow  old  and 
perish,  while  the  spiritual  value  is  conserved. 

The  central  problem  raised  by  the  question  of  truth  in 
religion  is  the  problem  of  the  validity  of  the  idea  of  God. 
A  strict  proof  of  the  existence  of  God  we  found  impossible. 
But  in  trying  to  make  our  experience  coherent  we  were 
led  to  conclude  that  a  twofold  postulate  was  necessary: 
an  ultimate  Ground  of  the  world  and  an  ultimate  Value. 
These  postulates  were  fulfilled  in  the  conception  of  an 
ethical  and  personal  God,  whose  will  brought  into  being 
and  sustains  the  whole  system  of  individual  existences,  and 
who  is  himself  the  final  Good  of  personal  spirits.  And 
this  thought  of  a  transcendent  Good  and  a  transcendent 
Destiny  sheds  a  helpful  light  on  the  perplexing  ethical 
problems  of  man's  earthly  experience. 

Looking  backward  on  the  long  course  of  religious 
experience,  we  see  how  significant  a  development  it  is. 
The  whole  Godward  movement  of  the  human  spirit  is 
unintelligible,  if  man's  origin  and  destiny  lie  wholly  within 
the  present  world- order.  If  this  upward  aspiration  of 
mankind  is  directed  to  an  illusory  Object,  our  faith  in 
human  nature  would  be  shaken  and  our  confidence  in 
spiritual  experience  would  be  broken.  Were  man  so 
profoundly  mistaken  in  his  deepest  interests,  a  scepticism 
extending  to  all  human  values  would  inevitably  follow.  A 
few  perhaps  would  not  shrink  from  this  depressing  con- 
clusion ;  yet  though  faith  in  God  is  not  always  easy,  it 
offers  far  fewer  difficulties  than  blank  scepticism.  The 
theist  has  a  sane  and  robust  faith  in  human  nature.  He 
sees  in  the  evolution  of  religion  man  gradually  becoming 
conscious  of  his  own  meaning  and  of  the  goal  to  which  his 
spiritual  experience  points.  Man  had  to  traverse  a  long 
and  painful  way — how  long  we  are  only  now  beginning  to 
realise — from  a  life  of  brutish  ignorance  swayed  by  animal 
instincts  to  a  fully  articulated,  rational  self-consciousness 
governed  by  ideals.  Still  in  the  end  he  has  emerged  on 


590  PROGRESS   AND   DESTINY    OF   MAN 

the  heights,  and  looks  forward  to  a  destiny  beyond  the 
world.  One  can  hardly  doubt  that,  in  the  religious  self- 
consciousness  of  man,  we  read  the  true  significance  of  the 
earthly  order  in  which  he  plays  a  part.  The  mundane 
system  is  not  an  end  in  itself :  it  is  a  basis  for  the  develop- 
ment of  life,  and  life  has  its  goal  in  spiritual  personality. 
The  '  expectation  of  the  creature '  points  to  the  '  manifesta- 
tion of  the  sons  of  God/  The  final  significance  of  spiritual 
life  is  revealed  in  its  movement  to  the  transcendent  Good. 
With  Plato  we  may  call  this  movement  "an  uplifting  of 
what  is  best  in  the  soul  to  the  vision  of  what  is  best  in 
reality." 

In  these  pages  we  have  time  and  again  combated  the 
idea  that  religious  development  was  a  necessary  process, 
the  manifestation  of  an  inflexible  law.  Spiritual  progress 
is  rooted  in  human  freedom ;  it  is  therefore  a  task  which 
man  must  take  upon  himself,  a  Vocation*  which  he  ought 
to  fulfil  Hence  for  finite  spirits  who  come  upon  this 
earthly  stage,  and  in  a  little  while  pass  from  it,  life 
furnishes  a  far-reaching  test — the  test  whether  they  willi 
realise  their  vocation  or  will  dissipate  their  powers  among, 
temporal  interests  that  are  doomed  to  vanish.  What  the 
significance  of  man's  spiritual  development  is  for  God  we 
can  but  dimly  apprehend.  The  idea  in  which  we  find  mostf 
satisfaction  is  that  of  an  education  and  discipline  of  finite 
spirits  by  God  for  fellowship  with  himself.  Men  in 
seeking  God,  if  haply  they  may  find  him,  are  themselves 
being  sought  of  God.  In  his  Timceus,  Plato  throws  out  a 
profound  and  suggestive  thought.  The  Creator,  he  says, 
was  good  and  free  of  all  jealousy,  and  he  desired  that  all 
things  should  be  as  like  himself  as  they  could  be.1  Further 
developing  this  thought,  we  may  say  that  God,  through  the 
religious  experience,  is  educating  souls  and  drawing  them 
upward  into  a  divine  communion.  This  is  the  truth  which 
is  expressed  in  the  great  Christian  doctrine  of  a  God  of 
Love,  who  is  seeking  to  redeem  men  from  the  dominion  of 
the  evil,  and  to  lift  them  into  the  fulness  of  eternal  life. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

THE  following  selection  of  works  bearing  on  the  Philosophy 
of  Religion  makes  no  claim  to  be  exhaustive.  The  books 
mentioned  are,  for  one  reason  or  another,  likely  to  be  of 
service  to  the  student  of  the  subject,  and  are  written  from 
various  standpoints. 


GENERAL. 

E.  Flint,  Theism.     1878. 

J.  Caird,  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion.     1880. 
^  J.  S.  Mill,  Three  Essays  on  Religion.     3rd  ed.,  1885. 
jx-J.  Martineau,  A  Study  of  Religion.     1888. 

G.  T.  Ladd,  The  Philosophy  of  Religion.     2  vols.     1908. 
V  G.  Galloway,  Studies  in  the  Philosophy  of  Religion.     1904. 
X  A.  Fairbairn,  The  Philosophy  of  the  Christian  Religion.     1902. 
X  H.  Rashdall,  Philosophy  and  Religion.     1909. 
•4"  J.  Watson,  The  Philosophical  Basis  of  Religion.     1907. 

Hegel,  Vorlesungen  ilber  die  Phil,  der  Religion.     2  vols.     2nd  ed.,  1840. 
Lotze,  Microcosmus.     2  vols.     Eng.  tr.,  ,1888. 

Grundzuge  der  Religionsphilosophie.     1884. 
Vatke,  Religionsphilosophie.     Ed.  Preisse.     1888. 
Rauwenhoff,  Religionsphilosophie.     1889.     A  German  tr.  by  Hanne. 
0.  Pfleiderer,  Religionsphilosophie.     3rd  ed.,  1896.     Eng.  tr.,  1884. 
H.  Siebeck,  Lehrbuch  der  Religionsphilosophie.     1893. 
H.  Hoffding,  Religionsphilosophie.     1901.     Eng.  tr.,1903. 
A.  Dorner,  Grundriss  der  Religionsphilosophie.     1903. 
E.  von  Hartmann,  Grundriss  der  Religionsphilosophie.     1909. 

Das  Religiose  Bewusstsein  der  Menschheit.     1882. 
R.  Eucken,  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion.     1901.     Eng.  tr.,  1911. 

Hauptprdbleme  der  Religionsphilosophie  der  Gegenwart,  5th  ed.,  1912. 
A.  Sabatier,  JEsquisse  d'une  philosophic  de  la  Religion.     1897.     Eng.  tr. 
E.  Boutroux,  Science  et  la  Religion.     1908.     Eng.  tr. 
J.  J.  Gourd,  Philosophic  de  la  Religion.     1911. 

A  history  of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  will  be  found  in  the  translation 
of  Pfleiderer's  Religionsphilosophie.  There  is  also  a  history  by  Piinjer 
which  has  been  translated. 

591 


592  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

II. 

THE  NATURE  AND  DEVELOPMENT  OF  RELIGION. 

D.  Hume,  The  Natural  History  of  Religion. 

Max  Miiller,  Gifford  Lectures  on  Natural  Religion.     1888. 
A.  Lang,  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Religion.     1899. 

Magic  and  Religion.     1901. 

G.  D'Alviella,  Hibbert  Lectures  on  The  Origin  and  Orowth  of  the  Conception 
of  God.  1891. 

E.  Caird,  The  Evolution  of  Religion.     2  vols.     1894. 

C.  P.  Tiele,  Elcinents  of  the  Science  of  Religion.     2  vols.     1897  and  1899. 

G.  Galloway,  The  Principles  of  Religious  Development.     1909. 

R.  R.  Marett,  The  Threshold  of  Religion.    1909. 

J.  G.  Frazer,  The  Golden  Sough.  The  publication  of  a  third  and  greatly 
enlarged  edition  has  now  been  completed,  1914. 

W.  Bousset,  Das  Wesen  der  Religion.     1904. 

H.  Usener,  Die  Gotternamen.     1896. 

"  Mythologie,"  in  Vortrdge  und  Aufsdtzc.     1907. 

W.  Wundt,  Mythus  und  Religion.  1906  and  1909.  The  second  and  third 
parts  of  the  second  volume  of  the  Vblkcrpsychologie. 

E.  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums.    Vol.  i.  pt.  1.     8rd  ed.,  1910. 
An  anthropological  introduction  to  the  work. 

E.  Rohde,  Psyche.     2nd  ed.,  1898. 

A.  Dieterich,  Mutter  Erde.     Ein  Versuch  uber  Volksrcligion.     1905. 

H.  Siebeck,  Zur  Religionsphilosophie.     Drei  Betrachungen.     1907. 

A.  ReVille,  Prolegomenes  d  Vhistoire  des  religions.     1881.     Eng.  tr. 
Religions  des  peuples  non  civilises.     1883. 

G.  D'Alviella,  Introduction  d  I'hijstoire  gtneralc  des  religions.     1887. 

S.  Reinach,  Cultes,  Mythes,  et  Religions.     3  vols.     1904-1908. 

The  student  will  also  find  valuable  matter  in  the  relevant  parts  of 
Tylor's  Primitive  Culture  ;  Hobhouse's  Morals  in  Evolution  ;  Wester- 
marck's  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Moral  Ideas;  and  Ratzel's  History 
of  Mankind.  On  the  History  of  Religion  there  is  the  Lehrbuch  der 
Religionsgeschichte,  edited  by  C.  de  la  Saussaye,  3rd  ed.,  1905;  also 
the  Allgemeine  Religionsgeschichte  of  K.  von  Orelli.  In  English  there 
is  the  excellent  short  History  of  Religion  of  Prof.  A.  Menzies. 


III. 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION. 

W.  James,  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience.     1902. 
>/  E.  D.  Starbuck,  The  Psychology  of  Religion.     1899. 
v  E.  S.  Ames,  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience.     1910. 
»  G.  M.  Stratton,  The  Psychology  of  the  Religious  Life.     1911, 
vJ.  B.  Pratt,  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Belief.     1907. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  593 

W.  R.  Inge,  Christian  Mysticism.     1899. 
Faith  and  its  Psychology.     1909. 

F.  Granger,  The  Soul  of  a  Christian.     1900. 
E.  Underbill,  Mysticism.     1911. 

W.  Wundt,  Mythus  und  Religion.     Vid.  section  II. 

H.  Maier,  Psychologie  des  emotionalen  Denkens.     1908. 

A.  Vierkandt,  Naturvo'lker  und  Kulturvolker.     1893. 

E.  Koch,  Die  Psychologie  in  der  Religionswissenschaft.     1896. 

G.  Vorbrodt,  Beitrage  zur  Religionspsychologie.     1904. 

E.  Troeltsch,  Psychologie  und  Erkenntnistheorie  in  der  R^Mgionswissenschaft. 

1905. 

E.  Murisier,  Les  maladies  du  sentiment  religieux.     1901. 
H.  Delacroix,  titudes  d'histoire  et  de  psychologic  du  mysticisme.     1908. 
T.  Ribot,  Psychologie  des  sentiments.     4th  ed.,  1903.     Eng.  tr.,  1897. 


IV. 

THE  SPECULATIVE  INTERPRETATION  OF  RELIGION. 

The  following  list  may  be  regarded  as  supplementary  to  the 
works  mentioned  in  section  I. : — 

J.  Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism.     2  rols.     1899. 

The  Realm  of  Ends.     191 1. 
-<  W.  James,  A  Pluralistic  Universe.     1909. 

G.  H.  Howison,  The  Limits  of  Evolution.     2nd  ed.,  1905. 
A.  K.  Rogers,  The  Religious  Conception  of  the  World.     1907. 
-rF.  C.  S.  Schiller,  Studies  in  Humanism.     1907. 
J.  M.  E.  McTaggart,  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology.     1901. 
J.  Royce,  The  World  and  the  Individual.     2  vols.     1899  and  1901. 
>  B.  Bosanquet,  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value.     1912. 
The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual.     1913. 

A.  J.  Balfour,  The  Foundations  of  Belief  .     1895. 

Lotze,  Metaphysik.     2  vols.     1877  and  1879.     Eng.  tr.,  1887. 

Gh-undzuge  der  Metaphysik.     1883.     Eng.  tr. 
W.  Wundt,  System  der  Philosophic.     2nd  ed.,  1897. 
F.  Paulsen,  Einleitung  in  die  Philosophic.     6th  ed.,  1899.     Eng.  tr. 
H.  Siebeck,  Uber  Freiheit,  Entwicklung,  Vorsehung.     1911. 
R.  A.  Lipsius,  Glauben  und  Wissen.     1897. 

B.  Varisco,  1  Massimi  Problemi.     1910. 


INDEX. 


ABSOLUTE,  the,  and  good  and  evil, 
505-06.  Vid.  Idealism,  and  God. 

Agni,  113,  121. 

Agnosticism,  and  faith,  328-29  ;  in 
current  thought,  378-79. 

Albertus  Magnus,  161. 

Allah,  139. 

Ames,  E.,  155  n.,  262. 

Analogy,  use  of,  in  religion,  326  ; 
meaning  of,  334-35  ;  and  animism, 
340  ;  and  theism,  341  ff. 

Ancestor-worship,  95-96. 

Animal-worship,  92. 

Animism,  70  ff'.,  90  ff. ;  pre-animistic 
religion,  90  ;  relation  to  spiritism, 
92-93. 

Anselm,  304  ;  his  proof  of  God,  382. 

Anthropomorphism,  in  common  re- 
ligion, 336  ;  in  current  language, 
340. 

Apollo,  114,  118. 

Appearance,  and  reality,  404-05. 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  325. 

Aristotle,  1,  61,  63  ;  on  functions  of 
soul-life,  73  ;  on  definition,  183  ; 
on  development,  221  ;  on  form  as 
essence,  278  ;  on  idea  of  God,  458. 

Arnold,  M.,  337. 

Art,  and  religion,  204  ff.  ;  Christian 
art,  206-07  ;  involves  sympathetic 
insight,  208  ;  office  of  art  in  re- 
ligion, 211-12. 

Artemis,  114. 

Artistic  creation,  compared  with 
Divine,  474. 

Attributes,  metaphysical  and  ethical. 
Vid.  God. 

Augustine,  5,  387. 

Authority,  and  religious  knowledge, 
317  ff.  ;  subjective  and  objective 
aspects  of,  320-21. 

Bacon,  on  argument  from  design, 
389. 


Belief,  and  action,  80 ;  religious 
belief,  83  ff.  ;  social  factor  in, 
84-85  ;  worship  and  belief,  86- 
87 ;  traditional  belief,  177  ;  in- 
volves feeling  and  ideas,  258. 

Bergson,  H.,  297  n.,  350,  536  n., 
556. 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  his  idealism,  406 
ff. ;  quoted,  512. 

Bhagavadgita,  the,  122. 

Biedermann,  A.  E.,  12  ;  on  divine 
personality,  496. 

Bosanquet,  B.,  on  teleology,  348  ;  on 
rationality  of  values,  356  n. ;  480 
n. ;  on  evil,  529;  573. 

Boutroux,  E.,  190  n.,  257. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  on  thought,  296  n. ; 
495  ;  on  evil,  529 ;  569. 

Brahma,  114. 

Brahmanism,  a  religious  philosophy, 
3,  121-22  ;  the  power  of  prayer  in, 
127. 

Browning,  R.,  570  n. 

Buddha,  141 ;  and  Christ,  145. 

Buddhism,  141-43 ;  and  Stoicism, 
143. 

Butler,  Bishop,  38,  324. 

Caird,  E.,  14,  416  n. 

Caird,  J.,  14. 

Carlyle,  T.,  163  n.,  459. 

Cassirer,  E. ,  420  n. 

Causality,    the    scientific    category, 

193  ;  applied  to  religion,  217-18  ; 

cause  and  substance  as  categories  ; 

290  ff.  ;    the  Kantian    theory  of, 

415-16. 
Certainty,  feeling  of,  not  sufficient, 

258-59,  cp.  318. 
Character,    and   motives,    534 ;    and 

the  self,  536  ;  and  conduct,  538- 

39. 

Child,  the,  mental  growth  of,  67-68. 
Chinese  religion,  119. 


595 


596 


INDEX 


Christianity,  and  religious  philo- 
sophy, 4  ff. ;  as  a  religion,  143  ff. ; 
divisions  of,  in  modern  times, 
247 ;  and  optimism,  548-49 ; 
apocalyptic  ideas  in,  551-52. 

Church,  idea  of  a,  173  ;  visible  and 
invisible,  174-75. 

Cicero,  123  n.,  182. 

Cognition,  what  it  implies,  298-99. 

Coit,  S.,  22. 

Conation,  its  primitive  character,  61  ; 
and  origin  of  religion,  76 ;  and 
development,  284  ;  and  value,  353. 

Continuity,  in  religious  development, 
230-31  ;  a  postulate  of  mind,  289- 
90. 

Conversion,  162. 

Conviction,  religious,  its  source, 
264-65. 

Cosmogonies,  164. 

Cosmological  proof,  anticipations  of, 
387  ;  two  forms  of,  387-88  ;  ex- 
amination of,  388-89. 

Creation,  different  meanings  of  word, 
470-71  ;  and  time,  471-72 ;  as  an 
act  of  Divine  Will,  473-74. 

Crook  e,  W.,  150. 

Cults,  fusion  of,  in  national  religion, 
112-13. 

Culture,  religion  not  fully  explained 
by,  213-15  ;  the  relation  of  religion 
to  culture,  218. 

Cultus,  explanations  of  what  is  done 
in,  164-65. 

Curiosity,  not  per  se  a  religious 
motive,  77. 

Death  and  pain,  not  pure  evils, 
526-27. 

Definition  of  religion,  illustrations 
of,  181  ;  difficmties  of,  182-83  ; 
suggested  definition,  184. 

Deism,  8 ;  merits  and  defects  of, 
459-60. 

Denial,  and  knowledge,  294-95. 

Descartes,  295;  his  proof  of  God, 
382-83. 

Destiny  of  man.  Vid.  Goal  of 
History. 

Determinism,  mechanical,  532-33  ; 
as  self-determinism,  533-34 ;  self- 
determinism  examined,  534  ff.  ; 
its  defective  idea  of  spiritual  de- 
velopment, 537. 

Development,  spiritual,  its  meaning, 
220  ff.  ;  relation  to  laws,  222  ; 
its  postulates,  229-30,  cp.  249-50  ; 
part  of  individuals  in,  231  ff.  ; 
defects  in  its  historic  working, 


244  ff. ;  and  a  single  religion  for 
the  race,  244  ff. ;  reality  of,  443- 
44. 

Dionysus,  worship  of,  154. 

Dispositions,  psychical,  and  memory, 
566. 

Doctrines,  religious,  their  presupposi- 
tions and  growth,  165  ;  as  dogmas 
of  the  Church,  166  ;  function  and 
value  of,  167-68. 

Dogmatics,  and  Philosophy  of  Re- 
ligion, 51. 

Dorner,  A.,  14 ;  on  art  in  worship, 
210  ;  315  n.  ;  on  mode  of  creation, 
473. 

Doubt,  rise  of  religious,  325  ;  philo- 
sophic grounds  for,  326  ;  relation 
to  progress,  328. 

Eastern  cults,  in  Rome,  154. 

Eckhart,  161. 

"Economic  school"  of  physicists, 
405-06. 

Education,  and  religious  develop- 
ment, 590. 

Egypt,  immortality  in  religion  of, 
663-64. 

Emanation,  creation  regarded  as, 
471. 

Emotions,  religious,  and  primitive 
belief,  84  ;  extravant  forms  of, 
154-55 ;  relation  to  sentiments, 
156  ff.  ;  emotions  and  sentiments 
in  worship,  158. 

Empiricism,  its  standpoint  and 
method,  274-75  ;  its  chief  defect, 
276. 

Ends,  and  causes,  348-49  ;  involved 
in  struggle  for  existence,  351  ;  and 
values,  354.  Vid.  Teleology. 

Epistemology,  31-32,  cp.  371-72. 
Vid.  Knowledge. 

Error,  significance  of,  293-94. 

Eternity,  and  time,  478-79. 

Ethical  consciousness,  and  ideas  of 
the  gods,  196-97  ;  influence  on 
religion,  235-36. 

Ethical  Societies,  198. 

Ethics,  and  religion,  how  related, 
199  ff. ;  problems  of  ethics  solved 
by  religion,  202-03. 

Eucken,  R.,  his  "  theological  ideal- 
ism," 16  ;  his  method  not  psycho- 
logical, 77  n. ;  on  past  and  present, 
217  ;  on  pure  historicism,  559. 

Evangelicalism,  161. 

Evil,  in  primitive  culture,  513-14  ; 
and  monotheism,  514-16.  Vid. 
Natural  evil  and  Moral  evil. 


INDEX 


597 


Existences  and  values,  two  lines  of 
thought,  36-47  ;  cp.  also  395. 

Experience,  inner  and  outer,  differ- 
entiated by  conceptual  thinking, 
286. 

Faculties,  notion  of  mental,  73-74. 

Faith,  belongs  to  nature  of  religion, 
184  ;  and  science,  194-95 ;  identified 
with  theoretical  knowing,  306-07, 
and  compared  and  contrasted  with 
it,  309  ff.  ;  interaction  with  know- 
ledge, 322-23  ;  does  not  claim 
complete  knowledge,  328 ;  dis- 
tinguished from  opinion  (56fa), 
330  ;  a  free  act,  332. 

Fall,  story  of,  515. 

Farnell,  L.,  114,  115  n. 

Fear,  as  origin  of  religion,  75. 

Feeling-continuum,  the  beginning  of 
experience,  283. 

Feeling,  in  religion,  79-80,  154  ff. 
Vid.  Emotions. 

Fetishism,  place  and  meaning  of,  in 
religion,  93-94. 

Fichte,  J.  G.,  315. 

Final  causes.  Vid.  Ends  and  Tele- 
ology. 

Founders  of  religions,  137. 

Frazer,  J.  G.,  on  magic  and  religion, 
99;  563  n. 

Free  ideas,  importance  for  mental 
development,  62. 

Freedom,  meanings  of  term,  532  ; 
consciousness  of,  536 ;  nature  of 
human  freedom,  538  ff. ;  and  sin, 
540. 

Frenzy,  religious,  154. 

Functional  theory,  of  religion,  214- 
15 ;  of  mind  and  brain,  565. 

Goal  of  history,  and  naturalism, 
553-55 ;  philosophic  views  of, 
555  ff. ;  not  a  static  perfection, 
559-60. 

God,  and  the  Absolute,  18  ;  problem 
raised  by  the  idea,  373  ff. ;  as 
postulated  by  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, 376  ff.  ;  how  idea  ap- 
proached, 395  ff.  ;  as  teleological 
ground  of  worlds  of  facts  and 
values,  443-44  ;  in  relation  to  de- 
veloping experience,  447-48  ;  and 
to  immanence  and  transcendence, 
475-76  ;  as  Infinite,  477-78 ;  as 
Eternal,  478-80  ;  as  Absolute,  480- 
81 ;  ethical  attributes  of,  and  revela- 
tion, 509-10  ;  and  man's  spiritual 
development,  590. 


Goethe,  168  n.,  336  n. ;  on  extra-mun- 
dane God,  459  ;  on  function  of 
evil,  541 ;  quoted,  545. 

Goodness,  a  predicate  of  God,  507  ff. 

Great  gods,  in  primitive  culture,  97  ; 
local  origin  of,  114. 

Greek  theory  of  ethics,  199. 

Ground,  of  experience,  429  ff.  Vid. 
World-Ground. 

Guyau,  M.,  22,  175. 

Hamilton,  Sir  W.,  his  philosophic 
nescience,  326. 

Hartmann,  E.  von,  his  religious  phil- 
osophy, 13;  on  the  unconscious, 
60-61,  431  ;  his  three  stages  of 
evolution,  506. 

Hebrews,  monotheism  of,  136. 

Hegel,  on  rise  of  philosophy,  2  ;  his 
Philosophy  of  Religion,  10  ff.  ;  on 
relation  of  Philosophy  of  Religion 
to  Philosophy,  42-43  ;  on  art,  205  ; 
on  development,  222-23;  on  On- 
tological  Proof,  385-86  ;  his  ideal- 
ism, 408  ff. ;  on  historic  evolution, 
446  ;  on  sin,  528-29. 

Helmholz,  417. 

Herder,  315. 

Historical  Proof  of  God,  392-93. 

Historic  treatment  of  religion,  216-17. 

History,  and  religious  truth,  264  ; 
and  the  religious  ideal,  314  ff.  ; 
applicability  of  idea  of  means  and 
end  to  its  stages,  360-61. 

Hoffding,  H.,  his  Philosophy  of 
Religion,  20-21;  definition  of  re- 
ligion, 181 ;  on  conservation  of 
values,  573. 

Homer,  religion  in,  127-28. 

Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  161. 

Hume,  D.,  on  motive  to  religion,  75  ; 
on  belief,  83  ;  on  reason,  267  ;  his 
empiricism,  275. 

Huxley,  T.,  the  issue  of  evolution, 
554. 

Ideal,  the,  and  spiritual  development, 
558. 

Idealism,  Absolute,  408  ff. ;  and  finite 
selves,  434,  cp.  464-65. 

Idealism,  subjective,  406-08. 

Identity,  and  continuity,  presupposed 
in  thinking,  288  ff. 

Idols,  evolution  of,  125. 

Imagination,  function  of,  in  religious 
development,  164 ;  and  the  re- 
ligious object,  303. 

Immanence.  Vid.  God  and  Tran- 
scendence. 


598 


INDEX 


Immortality,  early  ideas  of,  563  ;  in 
Christianity,  564  ;  science  cannot 
disprove,  565-66 ;  metaphysical 
arguments  for,  566-67 ;  ethical 
arguments  for,  568  tf.  ;  value  of 
idea,  573-74. 

Indifference,  liberty  of,  534. 

Individuals,  difficulty  in  conceiv- 
ing, 418-19 ;  as  psychical  centres, 
420  ff. 

Indra,  113,  121. 

Infinite,  the  negative  and  positive, 
477  ;  and  personality,  497. 

Intellection,  in  religion,  80-81 ;  weak- 
ness of,  in  primitive  religion,  104- 
05. 

Interaction,  Lotze  on,  450-51  ;  Ward 
on,  451  ;  and  relations,  452  ;  and  a 
common  medium,  453-54  ;  relation 
of  theory  here  outlined  to  Lotze's, 
455. 

Intercommunication,  favours  religious 
development,  235. 

Intersubjective  intercourse,  428. 

Islam,  religion  of,  139-41. 

Jahveh,  120,  135-36. 

James,  Prof.  W.,  on  pragmatic  view  of 
God,  22  ;  on  subliminal  conscious- 
ness, 60  ;  253  ;  on  Pragmatism, 
261,  267,  366  n. ;  on  intellectual 
proof  in  religion,  394 ;  443.  Cp. 
Pragmatism. 

Jerusalem,  W.,  291  n. 

Jesus,  the  religion  of,  344-45. 

Judgment,  development  of,  65-67  ; 
its  claim  to  truth,  256  ;  does  not 
mutilate  reality,  298  ff.  ;  and  an- 
alogy, 338-39. 

Jupiter,  113  ;  the  Capitoline,  123. 

Kant,  his  religious  philosophy,  9 ; 
his  division  of  psychical  functions, 
73 ;  his  critical  philosophy,  280- 
82  ;  solution  of  problem  of  religion, 
282 ;  theory  of  cause,  291 ;  on 
Ontological  Proof,  384-85  ;  on  Tele- 
ological  Proof,  889 ;  on  Moral 
Argument,  391-92  ;  his  importance 
in  development  of  idealism,  408  ; 
his  theory  of  reality  examined, 
413  ff. ;  on  immortality,  568. 

Kathenotheism,  120. 

Kidd,  B.,  25. 

Kingdom  of  Heaven,  early  Christian 
ideas  of  its  coming,  551-52. 

Knowledge,  need  of  inquiry  into, 
272  ;  empirical  theory  of,  274  ff. ; 
exaggeration  of  formal  element  in, 


279 ;  critical  theory  of,  280  ff.  ; 
social  factor  in,  285-86  ;  as  im- 
mediate, 295  ;  mediate  knowledge 
and  reality,  296  ;  as  interpretation, 
300-01  ;  and  faith,  329  ff.  ;  human 
and  divine,  488-89. 
Koran,  the,  140. 

Ladd,  G.  T.,  267,  357  n.,  401. 

Lang,  A.,  123  n. 

Language,  its  function,  65  ff.  ;  and 
animism,  66  ;  and  conceptual  think- 
ing, 285-86. 

Laws,  of  nature,  190  ;  of  mind,  288  ff. 

Legend,  significance  of,  in  religion, 
164. 

Leibniz,  as  religious  philosopher,  9  ; 
on  development,  222  ;  on  know- 
ledge, 278  ;  his  theistic  proof,  384  ; 
his  monads,  422  ;  denies  interaction, 
450  ;  on  evil,  524-25. 

Lessing,  315. 

Leuba,  J.  H.,  262. 

Libertarianism,  539. 

Lipps,  T.,  208  n.,  256  n. 

Lipsius,  R.  A.,  311  n.,  320  n.,  507  n. 

Locke,  J.,  on  knowledge,  275,  295  ; 
on  primary  and  secondary  qualities, 
405. 

Logos,  as  revealing  God,  502. 

Lotze,  his  religious  philosophy,  15- 
16 ;  on  Ontological  Argument,  387  ; 
on  personality  of  Absolute,  496- 
97  ;  on  conditions  of  self-conscious- 
ness, 498  ff.  ;  on  problem  of  evil, 
512 ;  human  wills  and  the  course 
of  nature,  557 ;  continuance  of 
created  things,  578.  Vid.  also 
Interaction. 

Lucretius,  75. 

Luther,  232,  255,  544. 

Lyall,  Sir  A.,  150. 

McDougall,  W.,  60,  565  n. 

McTaggart,  J.  M.  E.,  308,  491  n.;  an 
impersonal  yet  spiritual  Absolute, 
503  ;  on  inaeterminism,  534. 

Magic,  nature  and  purpose  of,  98  ff.  ; 
distinguished  from  religion,  100 ; 
ideas  implied  in,  100-01  ;  effects  of, 
on  religion,  103. 

Maier,  H.,  258,  284. 

Mansel,  H.,  326. 

Marett,  R.  R.,  100  n. 

Mars,  118. 

Mechanism,  cannot  explain  con- 
sciousness, 191  ;  and  teleology 
351-52. 

Mediaeval  mystics,  160-61. 


INDEX 


599 


Memory,  and  mental  development, 
60,  cp.  285  ;  and  survival  after 
death,  565-66. 

Mental  development,  social  nature 
of,  63  ff. ;  permanent  and  variable 
factors  of,  64  ;  part  in,  played  by 
perceptual  and  conceptual  process, 
284-85. 

Menzies,  A.,  definition  of  religion, 
181. 

Merz,  J.  T.,  23. 

Metaphysics,  and  religion — two  lines 
of  inquiry,  36  ff.  ;  and  World- 
Ground,  396-98. 

Meyer,  Ed.,  on  animate  and  inani- 
mate, 71  ;  95  n.,  99  n. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  on  scientific  logic  and 
moral  sciences,  220-21  ;  on  ana- 
logical reasoning,  335  ;  idea  of 
God,  458  ;  on  Omnipotence,  484  ; 
on  natural  evil,  517-18. 

Mohammed,  140. 

Monads,  nature  and  function  of, 
421  ff.  ;  difficulty  of  explaining  the 
external  world  by,  451  ff.  ;  and 
survival  after  death,  571-72. 

Monarchianism,  120. 

Montaigne,  337  n. 

Morality,  and  primitive  religion, 
195  ;  and  custom,  195-96.  Vid. 
Ethics. 

Moral  evil,  emergence  and  growth, 
520-22 ;  its  genesis  a  psycho- 
logical and  metaphysical  problem, 
522-23;  in  relation  to  theism, 
527  ff.  ;  and  divine  government, 
540  ff.  Vid.  also  Sin. 

Moral  Ideal,  the,  not  final,  201- 
02. 

Moral  Proof,  of  God,  391-92. 

Motives,  leading  to  religion,  57-58, 
cp.  78 ;  necessitarian  view  of, 
532-33  ;  and  character,  538. 

Music,  209. 

Mysteries.     Vid.  Orphism. 

Mystery,  in  religion,  323-24. 

Mysticism,  its  nature,  159-60 ; 
historic  forms  of,  160-61 ;  its 
danger,  161. 

National  religion,  and  greater  nature- 
worship,  113;  growth  of  its  gods, 
116  ff. ;  chief  features  of,  123-24  ; 
and  moral  values,  197. 

Natorp,  P.,  22. 

Natural  evils,  problem  of  their  dis- 
tribution, 519  ;  relation  to  moral 
evils,  519-20  ;  significance  of, 
625  ff. 


Natural  sciences  involve  a  twofold 
abstraction,  192.  Vid,.  Science. 

Natural  selection,  a  defective  princi- 
ple, 350-51. 

Neo-Platonism,  5,  160 ;  and  evil, 
515-16. 

Nettleship,  R.  L.,  580. 

Nietzsche,  F.,  198. 

Nirvana,  142. 

Norms,  ethical,  200. 

Novalis,  176. 

Object,  attitude  of  religious  mind  to, 
83  ;  faith  in  a  Divine,  not  illu- 
sory, 589. 

Obligation,  ethical,  not  explicable 
by  naturalism,  198. 

Odin,  118. 

Olympian  and  Chthonian  religion, 
151. 

Omnipotence,  its  meaning,  484-85. 

Omnipresence,  its  meaning,  486-87. 

Omniscience,  its  meaning,  488 ; 
problems  raised  by,  489-90. 

Ontological  Argument,  382  ff. ;  grain 
of  truth  in,  386-87. 

Ontological  problem,  the,  in  religion, 
32-35,  372-73. 

Optimism,  and  evils  of  life,  547-48  ; 
Christian  optimism,  549. 

Origen,  5,  472. 

Origin  of  religion,  the  historical 
problem  of,  56-57;  the  psycho- 
logical problem  of,  57  ff. 

Orphism  and  the  Mysteries,  134. 

Osiris,  119,  564. 

Ovid,  126. 

Pantheism,  vagueness  of  term,  461 ; 
strength  and  weakness  of,  463  ff. ; 
and  revelation,  583. 

Paul,  H.,  65. 

Paul,  St.,  312,  564. 

Paulsen,  F.,  327  n.  ;  on  anti-tele- 
ological  argument,  350  n.  ;  on 
Schopenhauer's  view  of  will,  546. 

Personal  Idealism,  17-18. 

Personality,  development  of,  435- 
36  ;  idea  of,  493  ;  divine  and 
human,  500-01  ;  divine  personal- 
ity and  revelation,  502-03. 

Pessimism,  old  and  new  forms  of, 
544  ;  and  a  calculus  of  pleasures 
and  pains,  545.  Vid.  Schopen- 
hauer. 

Pfleiderer,  0.,  his  Philosophy  of 
Religion,  12  ;  on  essence  of  re- 
ligion, 182  ;  on  consciousness  of 
God,  375  ;  on  Theistic  Proofs,  381. 


600 


INDEX 


Philosophy,  its  beginnings,  1  ff . ;  its 
method,  24-25. 

Philosophy  of  Religion,  materials 
for,  29-30  ;  and  the  truth  of 
religion,  33  ff.  ;  and  the  ontological 
problem,  378  ff. 

Pietism,  161. 

Plato,  1  ;  his  "  parts"  in  the  soul, 
73  ;  quotation  from,  128 ;  on 
problem  of  predication,  277  ;  anti- 
cipates Teleological  Proof,  389  ; 
on  original  "  stuff  "  of  the  world, 
454  ;  on  evil,  515 ;  on  immortality, 
566-67 ;  quoted,  590. 

Pluralism,  problem  raised  by,  424  ff. ; 
not  ultimate,  434. 

Polytheism,  basis  of,  118 ;  growth 
of,  113-15. 

Pragmatism,  as  religious  philosophy, 
21-22  ;  its  test  of  truth,  260  ff.  ; 
its  method,  297 ;  its  notion  of 
"  working,"  364-66.  Vid.  James. 

Prayer,  evolution  of,  127-28. 

Priesthood,  development  of,  128-30. 

Primitive  religion,  its  materialism, 
105  ;  exclusiveness,  106  ;  vague 
objects  of  worship,  107  ;  germs  of 
higher  ideas  in,  109. 

Progress,  no  immanent  law  of,  227- 
28  ;  motives  to  religious,  239  ff. ; 
open  possibilities  in,  556-57 ;  its 
goal,  558  ff.  ;  the  dilemma  of,  561. 

Prophets,  132-34  ;  in  Israel,  135- 
36  ;  and  special  revelation,  586. 

Psychical  elements,  distinction  of, 
72  ff.  ;  not  present  equally,  81-82. 

Psychical  nature  of  man,  what  is 
implied  by,  59  ff. ;  and  develop- 
ment, 61  ff. 

Psychical  origin  of  religion,  theories 
of,  74  ff. 

Psychical  Research,  and  immortality, 
564  n. 

Psychology  of  Religion,  30-31  ; 
function  and  importance  of,  251- 
53  ;  its  point  of  view  not  sufficient, 
254. 

Qualities,    primary    and    secondary, 

405. 
Quantitative  relations,  science  deals 

with,  190. 

Rashdall,  H.,  18  ;  on  Infinite  and 
personality,  497  ;  528  n. 

Rationality,  its  significance  in  re- 
ligion, 267  ff.  ;  and  value,  357-58. 
Vid,.  Values. 

Ratzel,  F.,  56 


Rauwenhoff,  327  n.,  482. 

Read,  C.,  345,  349. 

Realism,  naive  and  scientific,  404- 
05. 

Reality,  as  individual  and  all-in- 
clusive, 409. 

Reformation,  the,  174. 

Refutation  of  Idealism,  Kant's,  416. 

Reinach,  S.,  definition  of  religion, 
182  ;  204  n. 

Religion,  precedes  a  philosophy  of  it, 
26  ff.  ;  its  normality,  27 ;  and 
psychology,  30-31  ;  controversy 
with  science,  49  ;  origin  of,  56  ff. ; 
social  and  individual  factors  in, 
176  ff.  ;  affinity  with  art,  207-08  ; 
and  culture,  212  ff.  ;  causes  pro- 
moting development  of,  234  ff. ; 
three  great  stages  of,  242-43  ;  and 
reason,  379. 

Religious  experience,  what  is  char- 
acteristic in,  185  ff.  ;  its  data  not 
pure,  254  ff.  ;  and  idea  of  God, 
398  ff. 

Religious  knowledge,  features  of, 
302  ff.  ;  and  empirical,  307  ff. 

Renan,  £.,  324. 

Repentance,  and  determinism,  537. 

Revelation,  its  claim,  319  ;  meaning 
of  word,  582-83  ;  special  revelation 
and  religious  development,  586-87. 

Revivals,  religious,  154-55. 

Ritschl,  A.,  attitude  to  philosophy 
and  theology,  19  ;  on  theology  and 
metaphysics,  45 ;  genesis  of  re- 
ligion, 76. 

Ritual,  and  survivals,  149. 

Rivers,  W.  H.,  98  n. 

Rothe,  R.,  on  destiny  of  the  Church, 
175;  Quoted,  501  n. 

Royce,  J.,  14  ;  on  social  conscious- 
ness and  objective  world,  286 ; 
his  idealism,  411-12. 

Russell,  Bertrand,  quoted,  554. 

Ruysbroek,  161. 

Sabatier,  A.,  on  nature  of  religion, 
19-20  ;  on  genesis  of  religion,  76. 

Sacrifice,  126-27. 

Saussaye,  C.  de  la,  97. 

Savage,  the,  value  of  study  of,  68- 
69  ;  his  ideas  of  cause  and  effect, 
104. 

Schiller,  206. 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  366  n. 

Schleiermacher,  his  historic  position, 
9  ;  on  origin  of  religion,  75;  quoted, 
79  ;  on  attributes  of  God,  483. 

Scholasticism,  6,  305,  516. 


INDEX 


601 


Schopenhauer,  quoted,  378  ;  personal 
disposition,  544  ;  argument  for 
pessimism,  545-46. 

Science,  and  philosophy,  24-25  ;  aim 
of,  189-90  ;  natural  sciences  and 
religion,  190  ff.  ;  science  and  re- 
ligion involve  faith,  194-95. 

Scientific  knowledge  influences  re- 
ligious development,  236  ff. 

Self,  its  qualities,  420. 

Sentiments,  development  of,  157. 
Vid.  Emotions. 

Shand,  A.  F.,  157. 

Sheol,  563. 

Shrines  and  temples,  125. 

Sidgwick,  H.,  quoted,  177,  396;  on 
consciousness  of  freedom,  536  n. 

Siebeck,  H.,  his  Philosophy  of  Re- 
ligion, 17  ;  classification  of  reli- 
gions, 88-89  ;  248  n.,  439  n. 

Sigwart,  C.,  quoted,  285. 

Sin,  and  moral  evil,  520 ;  and  a 
rational  universe,  531 ;  exists  to 
be  overcome,  542-43.  Vid.  also 
Moral  Evil. 

Smith,  W.  R.,  Ill  n.,  126  n. 

Society,  a  means  to  personal  values, 
561. 

Soul,  primitive  idea  of,  93.  Vid. 
Animism,  and  Immortality. 

Space  and  time,  Kant's  theory  of, 
415  ;  in  relation  to  the  transcend- 
ent world,  577-78. 

Spencer,  H.,  186;  his  agnosticism, 
326. 

Spencer  and  Gillen,  96  n.,  98  n. 

Spinoza,  278  ;  on  intellect  and  will 
in  man  and  God,  341  ;  God's 
essence  involves  his  existence,  383. 

Spiritism,  development  of,  92  ff.  ; 
and  fetishism,  94  ;  relation  to 
ancestor-worship  and  totemism, 
95  ff. 

Spiritual,  the,  implies  the  personal, 
503. 

Steinthal,  65,  72. 

Stout,  G.  F.,  73  n.;  on  belief,  83; 
quoted,  453,  454  n. 

Subconsciousness,  its  nature  and 
bearing  on  religion,  59-61. 

Substance,  and  attributes,  291-92  ; 
soul  conceived  as,  567. 

Sufficient  Reason,  significance  of 
principle  of,  289. 

Sufis,  the,  160. 

Supramundane  life,  ideas  of,  579- 
80. 

Survivals,  religious,  147  ff. ;  of  spirit- 
ism and  magic,  149-50. 


Symbolism,  and  dogma,  167-68  ;  in 

art  and  religion,  210. 
Sympathy,  in  relation  to  knowledge, 

312-13  ;  sympathetic  magic,  101  ; 

"  sympathetic  rapport,"  425  and 

451. 

Tait,  P.  G.,  294. 

Teleology,  objections  to,  344  ff. ;  justi- 
fication of,  348  ff. 
Teleological  Argument,  389-90. 
Temples,  125. 
Teresa,  St.,  255. 

Theism,  immanence  and  transcend- 
ence in,  467  ;  in  relation  to  Deism 

and  Pantheism,  468. 
Theistic  Proofs,  nature  of,  381-82  ; 

historic  forms  of,  382  ff. ;  general 

criticism  of,  393-94. 
Theologia  Germanica,  304. 
Theology,  and  religion,  47  ff.  ;    and 

authority,     50-51  ;     sphere    and 

functions  of,  52-53. 
"Thing  in  itself,"  414. 
Thing,  the,  and  its  qualities,  418-19. 
Thought,   in  religion,   163  ff. ;    and 

knowledge,  293  ;  and  value-ideas, 

358. 
Tiele,  C.  P.,  classification  of  religions, 

89  ;  spiritism  and  nature- worship, 

90. 
Time,  not  mere  appearance,  443-44  ; 

and  the  divine  Mind,  479.     Vid. 

Space  and  Time. 
Totemism,    nature  and    significance 

of,  96-97  ;  and  social  unity,  105. 
Transcendent,  the,  in  religion,  186- 

87  ;  and  ethical  character  of  God, 

506  ff. ;    in   relation  to  temporal 

world,  575ff. 
Transsubjective,     the,     implied    in 

knowledge,  299-300,  428. 
Tribal  religion,  its  world-view,  104  ; 

and  national  religion,  110  ff.     Vid. 

Primitive  Religion. 
Truth,   as    functional  utility,   262- 

63  ;  involves  whole  nature  of  man, 

265  ff. ;  difficulties  of  idea,  360 ;  as 

correspondence,  361  ;  as  coherency, 

362  ;   as  practical  value,    363-64  ; 

different    tests    of,    366  ff.     Vid. 

also  Pragmatism. 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  definition  of  religion, 

55   and    181 ;   71  ;  on  absence  of 

ethical  element  in  Animism,  109  ; 

quoted,  151.    ., 

Ultimate  Good,  its  reality  demanded, 
201-02  ;  as  personal  Will,  203. 


602 


INDEX 


Unity  and  plurality,  424  ff. 
Universality  of  religion,  55-56. 
Universal  religion,  features  of,  138  ff.  ; 

question    of    a    single    universal 

religion,  246-48. 
Unknowable,  God  as,  326. 
Upanishads,  120. 
Usener,  H.,  on  names  of  the  gods,  107. 

Validity,  in  religion,  intellect  not 
sole  criterion  of,  266  ;  the  claim 
to,  and  its  difficulties,  255  ;  the 
problem  complex,  259.  Vid. 
Truth. 

Values,  and  historic  development, 
226-27  ;  religious  importance  of, 
354-55  ;  in  what  sense  rational, 
356  ff. 

Value-judgments,  in  relation  to 
God,  436-38  ;  to  the  world,  438  ff. ; 
and  to  progress,  559. 

Varisco,  B.,  298  n.,  417  n. 

Varuna,  117-18. 

Vatke,  W.,  12. 

Vedanta,  120. 

Vedic  Hymns,  120. 

Vendidad,  137. 

Vesta,  115. 

Waitz,  T.,  quoted,  56  ;  195. 
Wallace,  W.,  on  office  of  artist,  209  ; 
quoted,  493. 


Ward,  J.,  quoted,  422  n.  ;  on 
creative  development,  445-46 ; 
on  '  bare  monads"  and  'sym- 
pathetic rapport,"  451-52 ;  on 
human  analogy  to  creation,  474  ; 
on  evil,  543. 

Watson,  J.,  14,  463  n. 

Webb,  C.,  386  n. 

Westcott,  Bishop,  212. 

Westermarck,  E.,  196. 

Will,  the,  its  work  in  religion,  81 
and  86 ;  the  ultimate  unifying 
principle,  430  ff.  Vid.  Conation. 

World-Ground,  as  self-conscious 
Will,  431-33 ;  not  a  purely 
immanent  principle,  433-34. 

Worship,  and  attributes  of  gods, 
130-31  ;  growth  and  value  of, 
169  ff. ;  social  aspect  of,  172. 

Wundt,  W.,  on  vital  impulse  and 
action,  86 ; on  "  free  "and  "  bound" 
soul,  91  n.;  247  n.,  287  n.,  423  n. 


Xenophanes,  272,  337. 
Yoga,  160. 


Zarathustra,  133. 
Zeus,  113,  120. 


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University  College,  Durham.  [Now  Ready. 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  CRITICAL  COMMENTARY 


ST.  JOHN.  The  Right  Rev.  JOHN  HENRY  BERNARD,  D.D.,  Bishop  of 
Ossory,  Ireland. 

HARMONY  OF  THE  GOSPELS.  The  Rev.  WILLIAM  SANDAY,  D.D., 
LL.D.,  Lady  Margaret  Professor  of  Divinity,  Oxford,  and  the  Rev.  WIL- 
LOUGHBY  C.  ALLEN,  M.A.,  Fellow  and  Lecturer  in  Divinity  and  Hebrew, 
Exeter  College,  Oxford. 

ACTS.  The  Rev.  C.  H.  TURNER,  D.D.,  Fellow  of  Magdalen  College, 
Oxford,  and  the  Rev.  H.  N.  BATE,  M.A.,  Examining  Chaplain  to  the 
Bishop  of  London. 

ROMANS.  The  Rev.  WILLIAM  SANDAY,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Lady  Margaret 
Professor  of  Divinity  and  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  and  the  Rev. 
A.  C.  HEADLAM,  M.A.,  D.D.,  Principal  of  King's  College,  London. 

[Now  Ready. 

I.  CORINTHIANS.    The  Right  Rev.  ARCH  ROBERTSON,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
Lord  Bishop  of  Exeter,  and  Rev.  ALFRED  PLUMMER,  D.D.,  late  Master  of 
University  College,  Durham.  [Now  Ready. 

II.  CORINTHIANS.   The  Rev.  DAWSON  WALKER,  D.D.,  Theological  Tutor 
in  the  University  of  Durham. 

GALATIANS.  The  Rev.  ERNEST  D.  BURTON,  D.D.,  Professor  of  New 
Testament  Literature,  University  of  Chicago. 

EPHESIANS  AND  COLOSSIANS.  The  Rev.  T.  K.  ABBOTT,  B.D., 
D.Litt.,  sometime  Professor  of  Biblical  Greek,  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
now  Librarian  of  the  same.  [Now  Ready. 

PHILIPPIANS  AND  PHILEMON.  The  Rev.  MARVIN  R  VINCENT, 
D.D.,  Professor  of  Biblical  Literature,  Union  Theological  Seminary,  New 
York  City.  [Now  Ready. 

THESSALONIANS.  The  Rev.  JAMES  E.  FRAME,  M.A.,  Professor  of 
Biblical  Theology,  Union  Theological  Seminary,  New  York  City. 

[Now  Ready. 

THE  PASTORAL  EPISTLES.  The  Rev.  WALTER  LOCK,  D.D.,  Warden 
of  Keble  College  and  Professor  of  Exegesis,  Oxford. 

HEBREWS.  The  Rev.  JAMES  MOFFATT,  D.D.,  Minister  United  Free 
Church,  Broughty  Ferry,  Scotland. 

ST.  JAMES.  The  Rev.  JAMES  H.  ROPES,  D.D.,  Bussey  Professor  of  New 
Testament  Criticism  in  Harvard  University. 

PETER  AND  JUDE.  The  Rev.  CHARLES  BlGG,  D.D.,  sometime  Regius 
Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  and  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 

[Now  Ready. 

THE  JOHANNINE  EPISTLES.  The  Rev.  E.  A.  BROOKE,  B.D.,  Fellow 
and  Divinity  Lecturer  in  King's  College,  Cambridge.  [Now  Ready. 

REVELATION.  The  Rev.  ROBERT  H.  CHARLES,  M.A.,  D.D.,  sometime 
Professor  of  Biblical  Greek  in  the  University  of  Dublin. 


f 


ON  THE 


SEVENTH 


OVERDUE. 


JAN  10  1933 


R    16  1938 
FE8    21  '948 


7Aug>57MH 


REC'D  UO 

JAN  31  193^  p^G  3     \$>1 

*M  20  1933 


31  1 


NOV    1  *  1937 


LD  21-50»n-8,-32 


290969 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


